Economy

by Annaly Capital Management Seasonally adjusted greetings to Annaly Salvos readers around the world! In the commercial spirit of the season (and a day early for our blog post this week), we thought we’d go down a level from the headline…

Only in Germany and Turkey did tax revenue rise as a percent of GDP last year amongst the twelve countries in the Economist's graphic below. This is testimony to how deep the global downturn was. While it is unclear whether this graphic…

States and local governments cannot rely on the Federal Reserve to print money. As they face financial difficulties not seen since the 1930s, this is significant. We see the consequence of this difference on display daily in the sovereign…

by Michael Pettis For the past two months there have been very strong rumors in the markets that next year’s new lending quota was going to be set somewhere between RMB 6.5 trillion and RMB 7.0 trillion.  For comparison’s sake, total…

Traffic jams like this one in Beijing are likely to get much worse.  Photo:  China Daily In 2009, China’s auto sales surpassed those of the U.S., reaching 13 million units (cars and light trucks).  This came as The Great Recession…

Here's a run down of the recent woes in Vietnam.  As you may recall, they are one of the few Asian emerging markets to be downgraded by the ratings agencies from Ba3 to B1 by Moody's - both junk ratings. Most of the other ratings in…

While the Moody’s downgrade of Ireland isn’t any surprise, coming on the heels of S&P’s move last week from A+ to BBB+, the sheer magnitude of five notches warrants a mention.  We haven’t seen anything like this since the Asian…

Today Moody's cut the credit rating for the Republic of Ireland a full five notches down to Baa1 from Aa2. In addition, the ratings agency placed a negative outlook on its rating for Ireland , a sign that further downgrades could follow.…

I liked David Rosenberg's Breakfast With Dave piece this morning. He got into QE2, bonds, Europe and Germany in particular. Let me hit on a few highlights here.  First, Rosenberg says the recent uptick in bond yields might put…

Minutes from the December 7/8 COPOM meeting in Brazil are worth commenting on.  The central bank put a lot of weight on its decision to hike reserve requirements December 3, calling it a “fast and powerful” tool to contain domestic…