2018

Links on trade, Eastern European democracy, when cops become robbers, the coming hurricane season and much more

China's debt build-up has provoked increasing concern amongst Beijing’s policy makers. The resultant excess capacity exports deflation to the rest of the world. This creates pressures for China’s competitors which could engender a tougher…

Lingering concerns about long-term unemployment notwithstanding, inflation has taken center stage. The most recent jobs report, while weak, does little to diminish the Fed's view that rates need to move higher.

Links on trade, Trump, the UK economy, ECB trightening and much more

Former Fed insider Daielle DiMartino Booth knows the Fed will be out of bullets at the next recession. Even so, its Chairman Jay Powell is now desperately trying to create as much runway as possible.

We suspect some of the pressure on dollar-yen had been hedging activity ahead of the end of the fiscal year.  The end of the hedging operations may be sufficient to ease the pressure on the greenback.

The US Department of Labor released poor data for jobless claims this week. The number of initial claims for unemployment insurance jumped to 242,000. This is the last piece of data to come out before the jobs report.

Links on Apple, Amazon, the Postal Service, Puerto Rico and more.

There are growing signs that a trade war is possible, and that the multilateral trading system may not be able to prevent it. This column asks what would happen with tariffs around the world if countries were to move from cooperative tariff…

Links on Facebook, trade, wages and more.