Britain

I have two topics I want to highlight this morning. First, there are the US housing inflation numbers from Case Shiller, which are at a 7-year high. Then there is the fiscal drag in the US, Denmark, the UK, the Euro Zone and Canada. What I…

So QE cannot possibly offset the effects of fiscal tightening in the lives of ordinary working people - the largest part of the population. In fact because it seems to discourage productive corporate investment, it may even reinforce…

This is a second daily commentary today to give some weight to what's happening in the US after a slew of European-themed posts. I have three or four topics to cover here and I want to begin with the US economy including some thoughts on…

Actually this post isn't about fiat currency despite the title. It's really more about what is occurring outside the eurozone and most of the links I have concern the US, UK and Japan. Nevertheless, the three countries do pose a good trio…

Osborne has said in the past that his austerity approach is the right one and has pointed to a 2010 paper on government debt and growth by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff as evidence his approach is the right one. Given the recent furore…

I hate to sound like a broken record here, but I believe the anti-austerians have it all wrong about the politics of austerity. Everywhere I look, there is some analysis that takes the statements of policy makers and big investors as…

The yen bears have been frustrated by a series of developments. They were unpleasantly surprised by news that the Japanese themselves were large sellers, not buyers, of foreign bonds in the first full week of the new fiscal year. In…

Quick note here on the US and the UK to change things up a bit from the Cyprus obsession.

Despite calls from the junior coalition partner the Lib Dems, some businesses and the IMF, we expect Osborne and the Tory-led UK government to maintain the fiscal strategy of austerity. The austerity is counter-intuitively (for some),…

Europe is in recession right now, but the US is in a weak but fairly long-lived economic recovery. The difference in economic fortunes owes entirely to differing policy responses in both regions. In Europe, the economic paradigm has…