2014

Yesterday, I planned to write this piece as a compilation of narratives for individual countries in the global economy: India, the US, the UK, Spain, etc. However, some of these narratives are more useful than others. So I am going to lead…

By Marc Chandler As the year winds down, a Gordian knot tying Russia, oil prices and China together is receiving a great deal of attention.  Let's see if we can unravel some of the confusing twists and turns. We turn first to China's…

The Russian rouble was last trading at a rate a tad better than 55 roubles to the US dollar and WTI was over $56 a barrel the last I checked. This could be the end of a mini-crisis or a lull in events. I tend to believe it is a lull and…

Let me keep this Friday piece short as I am going to go a little out of my wheelhouse and talk about India. I have been hearing a lot of positive noises about India from various sources including Eswar Presad, Willem Buiter and Christopher…

Starting 22 Jan 2015, the Swiss National Bank will charge banks 0.25% to deposit overnight funds. This move will push the 3-month Swiss franc Libor rate, currently in a Fed-like range from 0% to 0.25%, into negative territory. And it is…

I am going to concentrate on the news flow today and what it tells us about where this financial crisis is headed. Given the last mini-crisis we had in emerging markets was overcome relatively quickly, the present crisis doesn’t have to…

I have been appalled at the cognitive bias that masquerades as analysis when discussing the recent collapse of the Russian Ruble. The purpose of analysis is to better understand what the real constraints in a given situation are and to…

This is my third post on tail risk now. I think the continued and broadening market volatility we have seen across asset classes in the last few months is a sign of increased tail risk and i wanted to put some parameters around how to think…

By Michael Pettis The Financial Times ran a very interesting article last week called “China: Turning away from the dollar”. It got a lot of attention, at least among China analysts, and I was asked several times by friends and clients…

Having just given you a mental model for thinking about tail risk, the natural next analysis is where the tail risk might be. Here are a few candidates.