Australia

The Australian dollar held support in the middle of last week near $1.04. Japanese retail and institutional investors, always yield hungry have taken a new look, especially as they begin trying to diversify away from the Brazilian cash…

Happy Friday. Here's a quick gold-level note note on what I think is going on in the markets and the economy right now that I am making freely available. Turning to the paradigm I set out in 2009, the following points frame the secular…

Good video with Steve Keen, the Australian economics professor with Max Keiser. Steve not only talks about the Australian economy and that country's housing bubble but also about the bursting of housing bubbles in Canada, the UK and Hong…

This will be a bronze level post. We see a number of data points in today's links that point to economic growth and employment dynamics that vary widely across the developed economies.

The dollar is mixed against the majors and EMs but largely remains confined to recent ranges. The EuroStoxx 600 slid for a second straight day, currently down 0.5%; MSCI Asia index holds recent highs. Demand in Greek bill sale eased…

Clearly, economic policy is now far more complex than it appeared to be before the GFC. As we enter this Age of Deleveraging, the worst thing we can do is apply policies that appeared to work during the preceding Age of Leverage—but were in…

Banking sectors in both countries are highly concentrated. The top four banks in Australia account for about three quarters of the banking assets. The top six Canadian banks account for upwards of 90% of the Canadian banking assets.…

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission requires futures traders to identify whether they have an underlying business interest (commercials) or if they don't (non-commercials). Here are seven take-aways from the most recent report that…

This is a great chart below via the Wall Street Journal. It shows the total debt to GDP ratios for the largest developed economies in the world broken down into four sectors: households, non-financial corporations, financial institutions…

Yesterday morning, I did the first weekly newsletter on my ten surprises for 2012. Here's a brief version of the list.