Brazil

Back in January, I said that as far as bond markets go, the convergence to zero would be a dominant issue as the deflationary macro environment made it difficult to raise interest rates. The US is trying to buck this trend, but in doing so,…

My argument has been that the US economy is not yet at stall speed and that recession is not on the horizon. However, I believe the US is slowing, and that, in conjunction with a strong dollar and the ongoing global growth slowdown, this…

Now that I am writing for free again, let me give you a quick update on what I'm thinking about. I still think the removal of China as a marginal buyer of last resort is the macro event that dominates all others. But there are a few…

I have been meaning to write this post for a few days. And as the information comes in from Brazil, from China, from equity markets, it seems all the more compelling that this is indeed an important period in market and economic history. I…

Many markets have now recovered from the initial wave of selling associated with the Chinese mini-devaluation catalyst. This should be expected. Some of these markets will surely continue higher. Nevertheless, the Chinese devaluation still…

The question of whether markets are prepared for the default of such a large debtor is a good one to ask in thinking about tail risk as the situation at Petrobras encapsulates the intersection of emerging market US dollar corporate debt,…

The last post was an attempt to describe a reasonable worse case scenario for the US real economy as relatively benign compared to 1937, a comparison making the rounds these days due to a piece by Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio. My point is that…

The title of this post is a bit alarmist. But what I intend to write is more about reasonable worst case economic scenarios that the Fed is looking to avoid. While a 1937-style downdraft is something to consider down the line, in the…

The meltdown in Brazil is not exactly unexpected since one of my ten surprises for 2014 was that Brazil goes into recession. But I find the pace of the currency reaction alarming and we should be prepared for a crisis as a result. In the…

Finally, Greece is off the table as the big topic. So I have a few topics I want to cover and am going to put them altogether below. Let’s start with the U.S.