Political Economy

The reason: QE. The downgrade for the U.S. is to A+ from AA, with a negative outlook because of quantitative easing, according to Xinhua. According to the ratings agency, quantitative easing will further depreciate the U.S. dollar and…

Below are two good videos outlining the Irish situation. For relevant background info see CW posts below (the last one is most hopeful): Ireland: Next stop – IMF, October 2009 How Does Irish Banking Play Out? Chart of the day:…

from earlier in the day by Win Thin Brazil press is reporting that President-elect Rousseff may replace central bank chief Meirelles after she takes office January so that she can exercise greater control over monetary policy.  We…

Here's a re-post of mine from New Deal 2.0 on the Germans and their political rhetoric on QE. Okay, I did a few years of German language study, so I know that the real word for hypocrite is “Heuchler”. But when I read the latest guff from…

US President Barack Obama was on "60 Minutes" last night in an interview taped on Thursday. He gave a synopsis of his thinking about the recent US mid-term elections. Here is a bit of what he had to say as written by CBS which…

The heads of state of the world's twenty largest economies are set to meet in Seoul, South Korea to discuss the global economy. The so-called currency war will be of particular interest during this session because of an escalation in…

Much ink, real and virtual, has been spilled over the last few days on the macro and micro of the election, QE2, global central banking activities, competitive currency strategies and asset-price targeting. We’re going to give that a rest…

I have been meaning to put together a few comments about the election on Tuesday but I haven't had the time to string anything together. But an enlightening video from Tech Ticker with Jamie Galbraith provides some good fodder. So let me…

James Galbraith was on Yahoo! Tech Ticker talking about Fed policy. The quote he made that caught my eye was this one in response to whether the Fed Chairman Bernanke believes what he says and writes: "Well, one thing you can…

by Comstock Partners In starting a second round of quantitative easing (QE2), the Fed is gambling on a program that has little potential upside and a substantial amount of risk. In the first round (QE1) the Fed bought $1.7 trillion of…