2012

The Free Exchange blog at The Economist has accepted my bet, and very cleverly (the bastards!) they have added a second one. For two years I have been arguing that a Chinese rebalancing will require much slower GDP growth rates than we…

Yesterday, John Carney at CNBC had a nice little post comparing Hyman Minsky's Financial Instability Hypothesis with some of the thinking by Friedrich von Hayek behind Austrian Business Cycle Theory. John rightly points to this passage as…

Last August, the Fed went for what I call "rate easing". If the economy weakens this year what will it do? I am not convinced it will be quantitative easing. In general, I think the Fed, while looking to support the growth side of its dual…

Sweden reported stronger business and manufacturing confidence numbers earlier this week, but the Feb retail sales report was a more significant catalyst. There are four new developments from Norway today. Individually and collectively,…

The forecasting proficiency of central bankers is a topical issue. At least, a friend asked if I could help with a list of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke's predictions. The list stops in 2008, although he has been no more accurate…

I have a number of links coming up in today's daily commentary. The likely topic will be US interest rates. But there is a second topic I wanted to riff on so I am posting here separately about fiscal woes in Spain and the Netherlands.

A growing number of indicators suggest that the market is running out of steam. Equities have been in a temporary sweet spot where investors have been factoring in a self-sustaining U.S. economic recovery while also anticipating the…

The focus now ahead of the weekend is three-fold. First, Spain is set to unveil its 2012 budget. Full details will not be available until it is presented to parliament next Tuesday. However, the overall savings is what investors are most…

This is a day of the general strike in Spain, so a large number of the links below are about Spain and the situation there, in both English and Spanish.

Below is a video of scenes from the least peaceful parts of today's nationwide general strike in Spain. Other links are below. In general, the protests were peaceful.