2013

News links for 9 Dec 2013

Banks pay next to nothing on deposits while charging a rate that is often linked to treasuries on the loans they make. The steeper the curve, the wider the "margin". And given the leverage inherent in the banking system, even a small margin…

Those inclined to the Fed tapering in December seem myopic. The employment was not the only economic report that was released before the weekend. The US also reported that the Fed's preferred measure of inflation, the deflator for core…

I have spent some time this past weekend reading what investment manager Hugh Hendry has had to say about why he has turned bullish. And the clear takeaways are twofold. First, it is very difficult to ‘fight the Fed’ when it wants growth.…

In the case of Greece, with fuel, food, and medicine making up a large share of the import bill, further economic disruption and destabilization would likely result from a choice to exit the eurozone. Exiting the euro does not appear to be…

China is not the first country to have experienced a long period of miraculous growth. But the most difficult part of growth miracles has not been the growth miracle itself but rather the subsequent adjustment.

Today is the day when the much anticipated jobs report was released. And the data were good. The jobs report was not the big news in my view, however, because at the same time we saw the jobs numbers we also got personal income numbers -…

News links for 6 Dec 2013

The US November jobs data are generally stronger than expected. The closure of the government and the re-opening suggests a two month average offers a more accurate read, which as we noted, is fairly steady job growth in the US. There are…

News links for 5 Dec 2013