Economy

Historical data shows conditions peaking in late winter to early spring and declining later in the year.

This is clearly going to create headwinds for consumer sentiment and ultimately spending patterns, particularly when combined with other issues consumers are facing this year.

The core of the issue is not whether the country could see one, or even two, quarters of positive performance, but whether any faltering recovery will be sustained out into the future, through 2014 and beyond. It is here that all the old…

When massive private and public sector debts result in a credit collapse and recession, the efforts to pare down the debt is deflationary. Measures to inflate our way out of the situation are likely to fail as households are attempting to…

I’ll be watching a number of things in 2013 in order to get a better sense of what the future will bring. On January 22 Princeton University Press will be publishing my book, The Great Rebalancing: Trade, Conflict, and the Perilous Road…

The rise and rise of Japanese debt is far from benign, and the dynamic, we are convinced, will at some point become unsustainable. Unfortunately by the time we reach that point it will be too late. Indeed, given that we agree with Krugman…

As the winter storm pounded the north eastern United States on Friday, gasoline futures hit another high. The March delivery contract broke $3.06, indicating that retail prices for fuel will be going up.

Brazilian central bank's highly accommodative policy in the past year and the recent weakness in the Brazilian real has helped boost growth.

The much-touted European banking union, designed to separate country and banking risk seen as the nexus around which the sovereign debt crisis has moved, looks weak.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph had an interesting post out yesterday on demographic trends in China. He writes that the working-age population in China is now shrinking as China ages quickly, in part due to the one-child policy.…