Credit Writedowns

I am going to concentrate on the news flow today and what it tells us about where this financial crisis is headed. Given the last mini-crisis we had in emerging markets was overcome relatively quickly, the present crisis doesn’t have to…

I have been appalled at the cognitive bias that masquerades as analysis when discussing the recent collapse of the Russian Ruble. The purpose of analysis is to better understand what the real constraints in a given situation are and to…

This is my third post on tail risk now. I think the continued and broadening market volatility we have seen across asset classes in the last few months is a sign of increased tail risk and i wanted to put some parameters around how to think…

By Michael Pettis The Financial Times ran a very interesting article last week called “China: Turning away from the dollar”. It got a lot of attention, at least among China analysts, and I was asked several times by friends and clients…

Having just given you a mental model for thinking about tail risk, the natural next analysis is where the tail risk might be. Here are a few candidates.

Earlier today, yields for 10-year bonds in Greece shot up 200 basis points as investors contemplate the risk associated with a potential government transition. European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker has waded into the domestic…

Crisis has returned to the eurozone with talk about a Greek sovereign debt restructuring rife. There is even talk of Greece being forced out the eurozone. With Greek stocks plummeting and sovereign yields rising, we should take this talk…

No one story sticks out for me today. So I thought I would make a few comments on the stories making the rounds today in the Internet. Let’s start in the U.S.

Despite, the high cost of gasoline/petrol in Europe due to tax, the fact that Europe is a large net importer of oil means the decline in oil price will be more of a boost for that continent than it is to North America where concerns about…

This fall, oil prices have tumbled so quickly that the effect on inflation, monetary policy and the economy is likely to be dramatic. As yet, however, we don’t know what those effects are likely to be, in part because the economics…