2013

News links for 17 Sep 2013

The Federal Reserve meets today and tomorrow to decide on the next step on monetary policy. In my view, this meeting is crucially important because it not only will mark a regime shift away from quantitative easing toward forward guidance,…

US President Barack Obama is in his second term in office. And because he cannot run for office again, his decision-making is bound to be different this term than it was in the first term. We are now seeing that in Syria, regarding the NSA…

Realizing that the Larry Summers nomination as the next Fed chairman was going to face some tough opposition in Congress, the president decided to pick someone else. Of course the next obvious candidate is Janet Yellen. There could be…

News links for 12 Sep 2013

Today, I am not going to write about a specific topic but rather put together some random thoughts on the direction of the global economy. Next week, I will have some big things to say about the Fed and it's upcoming meeting. So I thought…

The first seven trading days of September have offered all of these markets some much needed breathing space with EM currencies, bond and equity markets all doing considerably better. It is thus tempting to conclude that this was just…

Despite all the talk of recovery in Europe, the data suggest that the improvement in Europe is uneven at best now. The core has moved into a cyclical upturn but a lot of work remains in places like Italy and Greece. Today's data points…

This is crazy. John Carney tells us that not only are homes now growing increasingly less affordable, but the psychology of the US housing market is changing to one of the fear of being priced out. Frankly, I can't believe we are here…

Against a backdrop which offers an eerie parallel with events which took place somewhat to the North more than 30 years ago, Catalonia is now threatening to separate from Spain. In so doing the region seems to be putting at risk both the…