Economy

One serious addendum I made to my 2011 outlook had to do with oil and commodity prices. While I am cautiously optimistic, there are a number of potential pitfalls to a rosy scenario. Here's what I said about oil and commodities:…

Frederick J. Sheehan is the author of Panderer to Power: The Untold Story of How Alan Greenspan Enriched Wall Street and Left a Legacy of Recession (McGraw-Hill, 2009) and "The Coming Collapse of the Municipal Bond…

By William K. Black (Cross-posted from Benzinga) The big news in U.S. regulation last week was the release of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission reports. (There's a major article in the New York Times about Kabul Bank that supports…

The U.S. jobs data this month is a bit screwy. I wanted to flag something I saw because I think it is significant.  First, here is the headline. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an addition to non-farm payrolls of 36,000…

“If spending an amount equal to half of the world’s second largest GDP to buy up foreign currencies is not currency manipulation, then what is?” -Martin Wolf, Financial Times The perils of Chicago Many moons ago, long before I…

Andy Lees of UBS's London-based Equity Derivatives group had an interesting post this morning on the push in China to maintain sufficient energy resources in order to maintain economic growth. He writes: Yesterday China gave the…

By Marshall Auerback Yesterday, Ed wrote a good piece on consumer spending and the return of the economy to the status quo ante. I think it's a little bit more malign than that. There has been a real positive change in the underpinnings…

The PMI Index for the January 2011 Manufacturing ISM Report On Business® released this morning increased to 60.8% from 58.5% in December. This was well above consensus estimates, which looked for a dip to 57.9%. With 50 seen as the…

By Claus Vistesen As the proverbial line seems to be running out for Greece, I thought that I would look at a slightly longer, although no less important, issue in the context of Spain; more specifically the trend in net migration. While…

The big news when the advanced estimate of the 4Q/2010 GDP was announced last week was the recovery of the pre-recession level of GDP.  This was presented by some as good news, but was suitably qualified by others.