China

The thread that ties today's topics at Credit Writedowns together is the novel coronavirus pandemic. That's because how various countries have fared economically is very much dependent on what they are doing to control the virus. Let me…

The New Cold War I am going to have to get my hands on the new Pettis-Klein book that has come out recently. Here's how Yale University Press touts "Trade Wars are Class Wars": A provocative look at how today’s trade conflicts are caused by…

Although the title of this post focuses on Sweden, I intend it to mostly be a links post with various sub-themes. The idea is to share the news flow I am seeing across different countries. Since this is the first links post in a while,…

We saw a glimpse of it in the data last week for the first time, but the crushing impact of the coronavirus is now here. And the damage it is about to wreak on our economies is significant. This is likely to be a deep recession. Analysis…

I have been studying up on what epidemiologists are saying about the coronavirus. And, right now, there seem to be two divergent outcomes for how the Covid-19 outbreak develops. And there also seem to be two potential approaches to dealing…

I am going to write mostly about the economic impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus outbreak today. But I have one or two other pieces to add here as well.

The US economy has been growing for a record 129 months now. And the data that's been coming out of the US recently indicate that's unlikely to change anytime soon. Could the economic effects of the coronavirus outbreak upset this trend?…

There are conditions under which governments can create money—or debt—without fear of inflation or excessive debt burdens. There are other conditions under which debt or money creation can lead to inflation and balance sheet problems.

The US is the cleanest shirt Last week, I was talking to Megan Greene, the former chief economist at John Hancock for an interview on the US and European economies. And she said something that resonated with me about the global growth…

Yesterday, the overarching message of my post was this bit: "as we think of potential outcomes, policy error has to be a real concern here, especially in 2020 once the cumulative impact of all this takes its full measure." I don't think the…