Credit Writedowns

I've written my initial reaction to the news out of Germany that Angela Merkel is stepping down at the end of her terms as party chairwoman and Chancellor. Hit up this link for that story. It's on nationalism filling the void. And so that…

What to make of the Hesse election I have a wide assortment of political economy stories to present today. I can't pack them all into one newsletter. So I am going to break out a few into separate posts. I want to start with the news out…

Flight to liquidity reminiscent of January and February As the equities market sells off, it's worth noting how much the sovereign bond market is rallying at the same time. I am seeing the 10-year US Treasury bond quoted at 3.079%, well…

Some thoughts on the recent market selloff As I write these words, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up nearly 400 points, about 1.85%. The Nasdaq is up even more. Does that mean the market rout is over? No. But, for me, it does suggest a…

Did I ever mention that the South China Morning Post is one of my favorite reads? You're going to see a lot of articles from it into today's daily post because it is a great source for information about China. And today, it had a few tech…

What is nationalism? I think that's a pretty basic question. And it has a fairly straightforward answer. But, in the wild, out on the campaign trail, it's less straightforward. For example, I often see references to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as…

As the Dow Jones Industrial Average flirts with a 500 point decline, it's worth mentioning the flight to safety going on in the global bond markets. We are seeing major moves into sovereign bonds across currency areas. That has the US…

This morning, US stock futures are pointing to triple-digit losses after declines in Europe and in Asia. And the European indices are at a one-year low. There are quite a number of proximate causes for the weakness. But the overriding fear,…

I know I should be writing about Italy today since the country was downgraded Friday night to Baa3 by Moody's. That puts it one notch away from junk and potentially makes the country ineligible for quantitative easing, were it to come to…

I've written two posts about the history of support for the EU. And I covered the ground through the EU-15 period when Austria, Finland, and Sweden entered the EU.  Today, I want to continue the post series with the introduction of the next…