2012

The mood has turned against austerity in the euro zone because it is now rightly seen as anti-growth. The question is what next. Here I will hazard a few predictions of where euro zone policy is headed including a EuroTARP.

The Eurozone is experiencing a sharp contraction in the retail sector.

The agenda in the euro zone is changing. The likely outcome of the weekend elections in Greece and France are just as much an effect as a cause of the shift in the agenda. For the first time since the crisis began, the German insistence on…

The news from Spain's statistical agency INE is that the Spanish economy shrank 0.3% in the first quarter of 2011. Spain thus joins ten other Western European economies in recession. None of this should come as a surprise. Given the policy…

Ever since Willem Buiter mentioned the probability of a Spanish bailout some time in 2012, speculation has been rife about a Spanish bailout. In this column I argue that Spain is still too big to bail and that any bailout for Spain must…

The GDP numbers for the US came out again and they were weaker than anticipated, coming in at 2.2% for real GDP growth instead of the 2.5% expected. Nominal GDP growth was only 3.7%. That is not bullish for shares.

"Real final sales" and factory production continued to be supported by inventory building . Governments continued to shrink their spending, and they sucked -0.60% from the headline number. This report shows per capita disposable income is…

The details are a bit better as household consumption was stronger at 2.9% after a 2.1% pace in Q4 11. This accounted for about 2 percentage points of the 2.2% growth. How is the consumption being financed? Real disposable income rose 0.4%…

Last month PIMCO founder and Chief Investment Officer Bill Gross said PIMCO sees a mortgage-backed QE3 from the Fed as likely. As a result, Pimco has increased its exposure to these. He spoke to Bloomberg television yesterday about how his…

"We believe that the Kingdom of Spain's budget trajectory will likely deteriorate against a background of economic contraction in contrast with our previous projections. At the same time, we see an increasing likelihood that Spain's…