Economy

With so much going on at the moment and so many themes fighting to claim the main market discourse, I am in the mood for some random shots. First of all and to my continuing regret I have never actually got to thank Niels C. Jensen from…

Marshall Auerback here with a report from King’s College, Cambridge, where some of the world’s policy makers and thought leaders are gathered to discuss a new direction for economics. Over the last thirty years, we have steadily moved from…

Former Citigroup CEO Chuck Prince made what could be considered the most infamous statement of this credit crisis when he said: "as long as the music is playing, you've got to get up and dance. We're still dancing." -Citi…

Below is a link to the speech Thomas Hoenig, president of the Reserve Bank of Kansas City, gave today in Santa Fe, NM.  The critical part of his speech was: Under this policy course, the FOMC would initiate sometime soon the…

Michael Pettis is out with another great piece on the likelihood that non-performing loans (NPLs) will rise in China when the present spate of malinvestment comes a-cropper.  What caught my eye were his statements about the hidden ways…

I've been out all morning, but here are my thoughts on today's employment report. Before the numbers came out, I said I was looking for a mediocre report because that is the sort of not too hot, not too cold kind of report which won't…

All told, Friday's report could disappoint. But to a market preoccupied by the timing and size of the Federal Reserve's first interest-rate increase, a small job gain might actually be less traumatic than a supersize one. High…

Yesterday, I wrote a post which examined three different reasons the savings rate in the US could have been falling over the last year. Rebecca Wilder thinks this is a meaningless exercise: Edward Harrison at Credit Writedowns is…

Why is the US savings rate continuing to fall? Three possibilities: increasing asset prices, debt-related stress, a surge in strategic defaults.

(click pictures for better viewing) It was hard not to sense that part of the IMF's recent inquiry into Germany's economy was also aimed at asking the country to eat a little bit of humble pie in the context of the ongoing difficulties…