Economy

By Michael Pettis I don’t often make reference to these kinds of things in my blog, but Saturday’s terrorist attack in the Kunming train station – in which 29 innocent people were hacked to death (the toll was especially high among the…

Marshall Auerback was on CNBC yesterday afternoon talking to Kelly Evans and Steve Liesman on Closing Bell. And his read on the US economy is like mine, 1.5-2.0% underlying growth. He thinks the weak Q1 numbers are not just weather-related.…

Steel, iron ore futures in China tanked on bloated (all-time high) inventories and apparent lending curbs by Chinese banks.

"Most of the CPI effects of the Bank of Japan’s efforts to depreciate the yen remain confined to a relative price shock to food and energy that crowds out spending power elsewhere in the economy on future second-round effects in the absence…

There are two potential issues with the current re-leveraging cycle. First, the increase in the latest report, outside of real estate related mortgages as shown in the chart below, was primarily driven by increases in student and auto loan…

Given the difficulty in obtaining reliable data out of China, what other evidence do we have that the nation's economy is actually slowing? Here are four signs that seem to support the "slowdown" thesis.

Canada reported dreadful December retail sales and somewhat stronger than expected price pressures in January. The main take away is that a more dovish line from the central bank when it meets on March 5 is likely avoided.

So far the ECB has not responded to the disinflationary risks building in the euro area. Some Governing Council members dismissed the calls for action from numerous economists, referring to the analysts' reports as the "Anglo-Saxon"…

Falling activity rates are often blamed on the long-term unemployed giving up the quest for work. And indeed the US does have a long-term unemployment problem at the moment. Research by Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement…

As high income economies improve and the financial sectors stabilize, central bankers understandably and rightly, want to move away from the unorthodox policies that were necessary to avoid an even larger collapse and more suffering.