2012

The minutes from the March FOMC meeting have continued to drive the dollar higher, except against the yen, and bonds and stocks lower. Especially in the context of Bernanke's recent remarks, the, should we say less than dovish, tone to the…

There has been a lot of back and forth in the financial and economics blogosphere about the centrality of financial institutions and their facilitation of private debt accumulation leading up to the Great Financial Crisis. It seems to me…

We seem to be moving forward with this discussion on monetary policy, banking, and reserves. John Carney does a good job of summarising some of the initial forays in this back and forth. I am going to try my hand at framing the discussion…

I think the real difference between what Nick Rowe is saying and what people like Scott Fullwiler and Steve are saying is that Nick believes over the medium-term, central bank interest rate policy is endogenous. What I think Nick means is…

I like Jonathan Tepper's commentary about currency unions over the past century. His analysis says that the breakups have been feasible. The real problem in Europe's case is overindebtedness meaning that the potential exiting euro zone…

The more Spanish officials talk about the budget the less credible it seems. The 10-year yield fell 11 bp on Friday when the budget first presented before the weekend. Now as more detail emerge as it goes to parliament, 10-year yields are…

The video below is from On the Edge with Max Keiser. I speak to Max during this show from 31 March about the US economy, Federal Reserve policy, financial repression and more. On the issue of financial repression, I think my view is pretty…

At around 9:00am London time this morning Lord Wolfson held a press conference to announce the five finalists in his economics prize contest. Naturally Lord Wolfson is not looking for just any solutions, as the initial question makes clear,…

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM), the US purchasing managers’ index (PMI) for March increased to 53.4 from 52.4 in February, beating expectations of 53. It’s the 32nd consecutive month that the index has been at least 50.

The German data is still looking rather weak. I saw some numbers out of Germany that showed business confidence was rising. I don't know why.