Credit Writedowns

There are no big themes dominating the news today. So it is a perfect time to hit a couple of themes with an economic and market theme approach. Let’s talk banks, Japanese trade, the currency wars and deflation.

It’s currently very trendy in Italy to blame Angela Merkel, Mario Monti, and austerity measures for the current recession. This column argues that while the severity of the downturn is clearly a cyclical phenomenon, the inability of the…

While there is no definitive answer at this point to the question whether or not what we are seeing is a creeping process of secular stagnation which will gradually spread from one economy to another as the respective working age…

As a technophile, I follow the tech space assiduously both in terms of products and trends as well as companies and strategy. Every quarter that Apple announces, I have made it a habit of commenting on their quarter, because they are the…

It’s been a while since I did a multi-theme review as I used to do on Fridays but there are a number of threads out today that deserve mention. So I want to pack them into an economic and market theme post today. Market meltdown. First,…

With financial markets tanking across the board, there is a whiff of panic and some people might be thinking that the next global financial crisis is already upon us. I don’t think this is the case. Certainly, the European sovereign debt…

This post has been a long time coming because it is very much in my wheelhouse and I haven’t connected the dots for you on this issue yet. The nexus of zero rates, resource misallocation, and risk on has favoured shale oil. But the drop in…

I have long warned that the euro crisis was going to return. But recently my concern was more concrete i.e. that the renewed recession fears in Europe would force a decoupling between the periphery and the core in the Eurozone. This seems…

The Germans got into the eurozone out of a desire to increase European integration and to strengthen Europe as an economic area that rivalled the United States. Yet, now we are in a period where the Germans are being blamed for everything…

What southern Europe needs is a revolution in the mindset and more “better quality” stuff, and no amount of blaming Germany for the situation can get over that. The extractive networks who hold back growth need reforming out of existence.…