January 2012

I thought I would flag this for paid members. The jobless claims data for the last week came out and it jumped fairly significantly from 375,000 to 399,000. It had been in the 375,000 range for a number of weeks prior.

We continue to witness remarkable developments in the intersection of the related fields of economics, finance, ethics, law, and regulation. Each of these five fields ignores a sixth related field – white-collar criminology. The six fields…

Better than expected reception to Spain and Italy’s debt auctions have spurred risk on; dollar softer. BoE, as expected, left policy unchanged, ECB expected to do the same; Japan’s current account shrinks. US advanced retail sales expected…

My latest post at Credit Writedowns Pro on protecting wealth in a world of recurring crisis is now up. I outlined eight principal investing risks that I see for for 2012 and strategies to avoid those risks. At the same time, the thought you…

Quick, what country is the economic engine that will power world growth? If you answered "China," you're far from alone. But there's another country that deserves as much attention and better yet, is much friendlier to investment: India,…

All I want to know is: who’s buying this stuff in size? I might like the other side of that one.

Happy Wednesday. I know the news is 'less good' today than it was when I last wrote you but writing these weeklies always puts me in a more positive frame of mind. Nevertheless, today's topic is about downside risk. My hope is to frame the…

Spain and Italy begin this year's funding operations with bond auctions tomorrow and Friday. Although the euro is bouncing along its recent trough against not only the dollar, but against many of the other major currencies as well, there…

financial news links for 11 January 2012

While many will be initially surprised by the data, on reflection it makes intuitive sense. In crude terms, wealthier countries typically work smarter--more capital intensively--than poor countries, not longer.