Economy

By Michael Pettis This year to everyone’s surprise the PBoC failed to announce 2011’s lending quota. Instead it announced a series of new polices aimed at monitoring the banks. According to an article in Thursday’s People’s Daily: The…

by Edward Harrison The US post-bubble experience is often compared to the Japanese post-bubble experience. I have written a number of posts on the Japanese experience myself. Here are a number from 2008: A cautionary tale: story from…

I spoke to Paul Waldie on BNN this past Friday about the US and Canadian jobs reports. The BBH note that morning on the risk of “buy the rumor sell the fact” ahead of the jobs report was on the money. After the stellar ADP data on…

I saw this video before but after reader Rick e-mailed it to me I decided to post it. The headline is the interesting part. Greenspan believes the double dip scenario has been off the table for a number of months and that the wealth effect…

By Edward Hugh The recent decision of the Turkish Central Bank to lower rather than to raise interest rates in an risky attempt to quench the inflation flames that many feel are threatening to engulf what some call an “overheating”…

from the BBH Currency Strategy Team There has been an obvious build up of expectations about the US jobs report today.  The dramatic jump in the ADP estimate sparked a large upward revision in expectations even though the…

Word is out all around Washington that the Obama Administration plans to cut US defense programs by $78 billion and 70,000 troops by 2015. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a holdover from the Bush Administration with credibility within the…

The US Department of Labor reported this morning that initial claims for unemployment insurance rose to a seasonally-adjusted 409,000 from an upwardly-revised 391,000. This puts the widely-followed four-week moving average for initial…

Michael Hudson reviews the reasoning behind income tax policy in the 20th century, a good lesson in financial history. Interestingly, he says that data show tax cuts have been followed by slow growth in the US.

by Win Thin Bank Indonesia kept rates steady at 6.5%, as expected. However, we disagree with its dovish stance. Inflation pressures are rising, and tightening should have begun in 2010. Headline inflation was 7.0% y/y in December, the…