Commentary

It’s not fashionable to be optimistic about Europe. But I have been a Europe bull since last April when we moved from the front-loaded austerity paradigm to a backloaded paradigm. And beginning in June 2013, I saw the data moving in that…

My contention has been that the first two arrows of Abenomics gave the Japanese economy a short window to bring the Japanese labour market back to full employment, re-ignite wage gains, and institute structural reforms. In my view, Abe has…

Today’s ADP employment report came out with a figure of 139,000 jobs added to the US economy in February. This number is low and comes with downward revisions to past numbers. The ADP data are the last big numbers we will see except weekly…

Today’s links carry a widely-diverging set of opinions about the moral issues surrounding the situation in Ukraine. But since this is a finance site, I want to discuss the economic issues. I continue to believe the Ukrainian situation will…

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

Themes for today: Real economy deterioration in Argentina, Brazil and Turkey is evident. Ukraine may be isolated without contagion. US data continues to surprise to the downside. Eurozone data may surprise to the upside. Sweden may…

As I mentioned last week, I am on a winter break. So I haven’t been able to post over the past several days. But I have been following the news flow and wanted to make a few comments on what I am seeing regarding the US.

Themes for today: Commodities: soybean prices could fall due to increased supply. This would be troublesome for Argentina. Emerging markets: Of the fragile five, India is looking better, Brazil is still a big concern. Developed…

I have been sitting on my ten surprises for this year because not enough ideas had crystallized… until now. I think I will be ready to write the piece next week. Let me go through my thinking somewhat stream of consciously here. As a…

2014 is a transition year for the United States because 2013 was the breakout year for growth. In the third and fourth quarters of 2013, US real GDP statistics showed annualized growth of 4.1 and 3.2% respectively. Official statistics also…