2014

Brazil goes into a recession. Spanish GDP growth rebounds and outstrips German GDP growth. Gold rebounds to beyond $1600 an ounce. US GDP growth in Q2 and Q3 is below 2%. 10-year US Treasury yields fall below 2.25%. Abenomics ‘fails’…

News links for 25 Feb 2014

Steel, iron ore futures in China tanked on bloated (all-time high) inventories and apparent lending curbs by Chinese banks.

The value of the pound in 1945 was too high even for Britain as it was then, let alone now. It is time to put the past behind us, and move on.

Here are some brief thoughts on the monetary system’s role in repeated economic crisis in the last 40 years.

News links for 24 Feb 2014

"Most of the CPI effects of the Bank of Japan’s efforts to depreciate the yen remain confined to a relative price shock to food and energy that crowds out spending power elsewhere in the economy on future second-round effects in the absence…

There are two potential issues with the current re-leveraging cycle. First, the increase in the latest report, outside of real estate related mortgages as shown in the chart below, was primarily driven by increases in student and auto loan…

Expectations of future shortages in quality liquid bonds in US debt markets continue to persist. These shortages however are likely to be more acute for short-term paper. As a percentage of total government debt for example, treasury bills…

Given the difficulty in obtaining reliable data out of China, what other evidence do we have that the nation's economy is actually slowing? Here are four signs that seem to support the "slowdown" thesis.