2012

Today's links have three major themes. They are the continuing economic and political problems in Europe, the impact of the global growth slowdown on earnings and the escalating mobile war between Apple and Android. First on the European…

As I wrote yesterday, government deficits are the biggest driver of elevated corporate margins. This is significant in the US given the looming fiscal cliff and the already ongoing margin mean reversion. Using the financial sectoral…

By Michael Pettis Chiwoong Lee at Goldman Sachs has a new report out (“China vs. 1970s Japan”, September 25, 2012) in which he predicts that China’s long-term growth rate will drop to 7.5-8.5%. I disagree very strongly with his forecast,…

Moody's released the following announcement on Friday in connection with a review it is now conducting regarding the Canadian banking sector. Moody's Investors Service has placed the long-term ratings of six Canadian banks (including the…

I think it goes without saying for those of you who have been using the sectoral balances approach, government deficits are what have been driving corporate profits in the U.S. to record levels. Most analysts and news outlets focus on the…

Since there are so many Apple stories out there in today's links, I am going to expand upon my feature-length post "The Case Against Apple" from earlier today. The dilemma as I set out early in the year is between margin and share. Apple is…

While I first started warning  about Android taking share from Apple in 2009, I was not worried about earnings at Apple. It wasn't until this year that margin compression became an issue for me. But even then, it wasn't clear the issue…

By Marc Chandler The Wall Street Journal brings to our attention the fact that the reserves at the Reserve Bank of Australia have risen sharply over the past two months. Its reserves have risen by A$863 mln over the past two months after…

Yesterday I wrote a lot about this topic for Gold subscribers, asking "Will Merkel grant ‘austerity model’ Ireland retroactive bank recap mutualisation?" This post gives a full account of the European bank recap issue, so I won't re-hash…

After embarking on a third round of easing last year that only involved extending the length of its zero rate policy and changing the Fed's Treasury portfolio duration mix, the Fed has recently started QE3 with an even more aggressive tone.…