Economy

This is just an update to this morning's post. The numbers were profit of $12.30 a share ($11.62 billion), up from $6.40 a share ($5.98 billion) last year.

A look at the fundamentals shows why Fernandez is engaging in such visible theatrics, which also includes recent vitriol regarding the Falkland Islands. Simply put, we think economic stresses are intensifying. How deep the stresses will get…

Ireland dealt fairly quickly with its property market bubble by effectively and forcefully nationalizing and recapitalizing its banking sector. They clearly still have a serious problem on their hands, but the nation has been aggressive in…

The concept of German decoupling from the Eurozone recession may have been wishful thinking. The latest German Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) has converged with that of the Eurozone as a whole. Manufacturing PMI is a closely…

The string of developments has encouraged risk-off behavior. Equity markets are lower. Core bonds are higher. The high beta currencies, such as the freely traded emerging market currencies, the Australian and Canadian dollars, the euro,…

In last week's weekly newsletter, I explained why Spain was in big trouble. Today I want to present the full context euro zone-wide and why there will be more sovereign defaults to come in the euro zone. This will be a very comprehensive…

I ran across three separate articles on peak oil at well-regarded financial news sites today: The Economist, The Financial Times and Le Figaro. I thought I'd give you a run down of what they were saying and what it means for the economy and…

Since the Great Financial Crisis began, Austrian house prices have zoomed at a pace well above the rate of inflation and the rate of rentals. The price action and other anecdotes make this sound suspiciously like a bubble. The same has…

The Economist: "Over the past 30 years, China’s total fertility rate—the number of children a woman can expect to have during her lifetime—has fallen from 2.6, well above the rate needed to hold a population steady, to 1.56, well below that…

The rump Dexia now owned by the Belgian government is a structurally loss-making enterprise that will cost the Belgian government 2 billion in deficits every year from 2014.