2011

USD continues to surge amid safe haven demand; EUR breaks below 1.35, EM currencies drop 1-2.5%. The Fed delivered “Operation Twist” but bleak economic outlook continues to weigh on sentiment. Czech CB remains put, South African CB expected…

We’ve posted many times on this blog about how the Hang Seng Index is one of our indicators species for global risk appetite. The index usually leads global markets on the downside and turns up before most.

If you believed the Republican leaders, you would say this is reckless monetary policy aimed specifically at supporting President Obama, a Democrat. You saw the last post I wrote, with the court scene from “A Few Good Men” tacked on.…

The Fed is not just doing QE via Operation Twist, it is also throwing in some mortgage-backeds to up the ante a little bit.

The future of Euro is going to be determined by the Greek street in the next few weeks and how they react to the new austerity measures. G-Pap has his work cut out convincing the population the pain is worth it. Stay tuned.

I was on BNN this afternoon talking about the Fed running out of ammo, America banks getting downgraded, European banks needing $300 billion in capital, and Greece defaulting on its debt obligations plus a host of other issues – none of…

"The larger the haircut that bondholders accept, the better the outlook for the Greek sovereign from a credit quality perspective after the default," said Tony Stringer, a country debt analyst with Fitch.

Despite pockets of relative outperformance, EM currencies have fared terribly this month and bring to mind parallels with the great EM sell-off of 2008-2009. While a revisiting of the 2008-2009 lows seems too aggressive right now, we are…

The overall gist of Jim Chanos' comments on Bloomberg yesterday were that China has off-balance sheet contingent liabilities due to its implicit commitment to state-owned enterprises which are kneee-deep in land and property speculation.…

He is a remarkable man, full of energy and optimism. He said something about himself that I found wonderfully humble