2014

Earlier today, yields for 10-year bonds in Greece shot up 200 basis points as investors contemplate the risk associated with a potential government transition. European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker has waded into the domestic…

Crisis has returned to the eurozone with talk about a Greek sovereign debt restructuring rife. There is even talk of Greece being forced out the eurozone. With Greek stocks plummeting and sovereign yields rising, we should take this talk…

No one story sticks out for me today. So I thought I would make a few comments on the stories making the rounds today in the Internet. Let’s start in the U.S.

Despite, the high cost of gasoline/petrol in Europe due to tax, the fact that Europe is a large net importer of oil means the decline in oil price will be more of a boost for that continent than it is to North America where concerns about…

This fall, oil prices have tumbled so quickly that the effect on inflation, monetary policy and the economy is likely to be dramatic. As yet, however, we don’t know what those effects are likely to be, in part because the economics…

This morning, the US Labor Department reported a very bullish 321,000 increase in non-farm payrolls in November, well above expectations. Importantly, average hourly earnings showed the biggest gain since June 2013. And hours worked…

The European situation is still flirting with recession, if we look at the latest PMI data. I think the drop in oil prices will give the Europeans an unmitigated boost but the longer-term situation is still dire given the policy framework…

By Niels Jensen The Absolute Return Letter, December 2014 “The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.” Aldous Huxley In the the last two Absolute Return Letters I have argued why one should expect…

By Michael Pettis Two years ago it was hard to find analysts who expected average GDP growth over the rest of this decade to be less than 8%. The current consensus seems to have dropped to between 6% and 7% on average. I don’t think…

Tim Duy wrote a post on his blog on Sunday about his optimism about the US economy that got me thinking and I want to use it as a launching pad for a discussion about baseline economic scenarios. My baseline is positive, optimistic if you…