Credit Writedowns

At the end of April, I wrote a bullish piece centered on an economic snapback after the re-opening, in large part because of pervasive bearish sentiment. I called it "Negative sentiment, the oil price collapse and re-opening business".…

Shares are mixed in early trading today in the US after several days of positive performance. And while this might seem incongruous with the social unrest happening in the United States, there is no historical data supporting the notion…

Falling apart I haven't posted in a week because I am trying to process what's happening in the United States right now. With the pandemic and 20-25% unemployment and cities torn by protest and violence, it really seems like the country is…

By Michael Pettis This post was originally published at China Financial Markets at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace website According to a May 2020 CNN article, one consequence of the coronavirus pandemic is that “Americans…

The New Cold War I am going to have to get my hands on the new Pettis-Klein book that has come out recently. Here's how Yale University Press touts "Trade Wars are Class Wars": A provocative look at how today’s trade conflicts are caused by…

Those of you who know my writing from days gone day, when Credit Writedowns was a blog, know that I gave up advocating for policy responses a long time ago. Not to be a defeatist, but the lesson I learned from the Great Financial Crisis was…

In yesterday's post, I was mostly upbeat about near-term economic outcomes. The overall gist was that we are going to see a snapback recovery soon that makes this the shortest recession on record. But, the snapback won't get us to anywhere…

Yesterday was a nice little rally in shares on the back of good news about a virus trial and stimulus support in the US and Europe. That saw us get well over the 61.8% retracement level for the S&P500, where there had been a lot of…

I ended yesterday's post writing that the only thing one could predict with certainty was that there will be policy errors going forward. When faced with so much uncertainty on both the healthcare front and on economic policy, it's…

I took a hiatus from writing for a few days to see if I could get a clearer perspective. But, the reality is that there is no visibility to anything going forward. Making longer-term predictions is probably a fool's errand then.…