2011

It looks so easy. Risk on and risk off. When risk trades are being put on, equity market and commodities prices, like gold and oil, rise. The euro appreciates and the yen sells off. When risk trades come off, just the opposite takes place.…

Here are a few bullet points that outline some of the major takeaways from this job report. I have put them in pro versus con format, with pro being good data and con being bad data. PRO The headline numbers of 8.9% unemployment…

The US Department of Labor released the Employment Situation Summary for February 2011 this morning at 830ET. The data showed an increase of 192,000 jobs from non-farms payrolls with the headline rate of unemployment declining to 8.9% from…

The last time Ray Dalio conducted a major interview, the global economy seemed to be headed toward a major depression. This was in February 2009 when Barron's had a conversation with Bridgewater Associates' Ray Dalio. For his part, Dalio…

Cross post with GEI News The Bangladesh Government has ordered Muhammad Yunus removed as a managing director of Gameen Bank. Yunus won a Nobel prize for his work in microfinance, a system that provides opportunity for the impoverished to…

Hugo Chavez as peacemaker? Color us skeptical. Chavez is hardly an impartial third party in this conflict, as he has cozied up to Qaddafi over the years. As such, we would not expect opposition forces to be very open to any sort of Chavez…

Since early this morning, we have had server problems. I think using Google's Feedburner with full feed has borked our server. So until we can figure out what happened, we are switching to summary feeds. However, a link to the full article…

With the jobs numbers coming out tomorrow, it bears noting that the official U.S. data have been marred by low labour participation rates. The reality is that while the jobs picture is improved, many of the long-time unemployed have dropped…

By Marc Chandler ECB President Trichet is signaling a rate hike and the market debate seems to be between April and May. While the monetary setting may be too easy for Germany, the peripheral countries, where the debt crisis has been…

By Marc Chandler Trichet has stayed true to form and issued relative hawkish signals. Two key points--"strong vigilance" is needed and no reiteration of the mantra that "interest rates are appropriate". He explicitly…