2013

Raghuram Rajan has an interesting post now up on Project Syndicate. The overall tone of it has an Austrian feel as it stresses the failure of stimulus to allow developed economies to attain higher GDP growth a full five years after a…

Last October, I highlighted the issue of bailout extensions to Ireland and Portugal and so I want to re-visit this theme now that Portugal and Ireland are in the news looking to change the terms of their existing bailouts.

Although the House GOP leadership has been divided on how to deal with the upcoming fiscal contests, they have apparently decided to raise the debt ceiling and focus on the sequester as I have predicted.

While Germany's numbers for Q4 2012 were poor, showing a contraction of 0.5%, I noted in my last post on Germany that this does not mean recession. The contraction was due to export and capital investment figures, which look to rebound in…

In the past year, I have increasingly turned away from the US housing market to stress the difficulties now besetting other global housing markets because there have been large house price appreciations (and some declines) elsewhere in…

News links for 20 January 2013

Unappreciated by many is the fact that the Italian economy has seen the largest contraction (7%) since the crisis began within the euro zone after Greece. Per capita income is back, according to former ECB's Bini Smaghi, to where it was in…

The financial crisis has reduced the ranks of countries with pristine macro fundamentals. Thus, the availability of safe assets has declined precipitously. Investors in a bind where they have funds to invest but a limited number of options,…

The key to Spain's turning the corner as 2013 begins is the housing market. This takes on increasing importance given the reprieve in crisis interest rates. House prices are still falling and the economy is contracting despite the…