2013

I just wanted to follow up on Randy Wray's last post to look at this Trillion Dollar Coin idea from an investing perspective. I believe the coin would be bullish for Treasuries because it lowers average Treasury duration and alters private…

The Platinum coin has been all over the blogosphere as well as the media. Some have been arguing it will cause hyperinflation. How can issuing a coin to be held at the Fed to allow the Treasury to spend up to budgeted amount lead to…

A good article in the Spanish-language Actibva reviews what to expect from the Spanish government regarding debt and deficits in 2013. I can't speak to the predictive ability here but the article is good at a minimum for its highlighting of…

The rise of nationalism does not bode well for Japan's participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an attempt to build a free-trade area covering both sides of the Pacific. Although it was somewhat controversial for the DPJ, it had…

I have heard a lot of doomsday predictions regarding Japan over the last twenty years. None of them have panned out as yet. This year, we are hearing a lot more as a result of the Japanese Central Bank's intention of 'monetizing' the…

The French housing market transaction volume declined by 25% last year, according to Century21. The fall in the French housing market is just beginning. And given the macro problems in France and the previous run up in house prices, the…

Let's talk about deficits for a second. The term deficit has some pretty serious negative connotations. So when we use that word, usually the implication is that the deficit is bad. Here's the thing though; as I have written here a number…

I have a ton of links here since I haven't been able to post since New Year's Eve. I hope to have a bit more link commentary coming forward in upcoming links posts. A few of the Spain links are older articles I thought relevant to today.  …

I got the following spam email yesterday. It was sent from an email address with the sender name BEN BERNANKE

The explosive market rally following the fiscal cliff agreement was based more on what didn't happen than what did. What didn't happen was the implementation of automatic tax increases and spending cuts that would have shaved about 5% off…