Credit Writedowns

We are seeing broad improvements across global commodity markets. To be sure, commodity valuations are still at depressed levels relative to the past decade, but after a prolonged decline, broad indices seem to have stabilized.

I thought the podcast below was a good one. Basically, central banks are making it up as they go along. It's not a science. Also see William White on Ultra Easy Monetary Policy and the Law of Unintended Consequences.

The effectiveness of US sanctions against Russia are almost toothless if they are unilateral. The conditions that the IMF will likely require to put Ukraine on more sustainable fiscal footing will mean economic hardship and may do more to…

Today’s links carry a widely-diverging set of opinions about the moral issues surrounding the situation in Ukraine. But since this is a finance site, I want to discuss the economic issues. I continue to believe the Ukrainian situation will…

News links for 4 Mar 2014

By WIn Thin Parallels have already been drawn between current events in Ukraine and the Russian-Georgian conflict of 2008. These parallels are unmistakable, yet the one big difference so far is that Ukraine has taken care not to give…

By Michael Pettis I don’t often make reference to these kinds of things in my blog, but Saturday’s terrorist attack in the Kunming train station – in which 29 innocent people were hacked to death (the toll was especially high among the…

By Claus Vistesen ... China! At least this is the conclusion from some fascinating number crunching from JPMorgan's Flow & Liquidity team in their report last week. I had a feeling that this was the case looking at the surge in…

The conflict in Ukraine is first and foremost about the violent overthrow of a corrupt regime that was not increasing living standards. But now that Ukraine has appealed to the west, it has become much more about Russia’s sphere of…

News links for 3 Mar 2014