2013

Despite Europe’s continual moving of the goalposts to give countries more breathing room, the economic paradigm in Europe is still the same: austerity. This will dampen growth in Europe for the foreseeable future and increase government…

News links for 24 Oct 2013

Here is an observation. The last couple of years show some interesting similarities to the period ending in early 2005. The reason for such a comparison is that then, just as now the Fed began to gradually exit its highly accommodative…

I was just re-reading Richard Werner’s initial quantitative easing scheme for Germany from 1995. What he says is relevant to today’s situation in Europe and the United States as well as for today’s Japan. I want to highlight a few lines…

With Spain posting its first gains in GDP in over two years, every media outlet I have seen is trumpeting this as the end of the eurozone recession. I called it early, yes. However, one quarter’s GDP growth does not make recovery. Let’s…

News links for 23 Oct 2013

WTI crude oil has undergone a substantial correction in the last few days. What's going on?

Five or six years ago, a few skeptics first started pointing out that the credit dynamics underlying Chinese growth was creating an unsustainable increase in debt. This, they warned, would ultimately undermine the banking system and cause…

News links for 22 Oct 2013

People want to see tight fiscal policy and loose monetary policy if stimulus is necessary. That is current policy orthodoxy and it will continue to be the case until at least the next cyclical downturn. If policy makers can ride out this…