commodities

Safe assets are in short supply. If the US government shuts down for a long time, there will be a flight to quality. And the lack of safe assets will support the Treasury market.

We learned today that China's trade volume unexpectedly 3.1% year-on-year in June with both imports and exports down. This unexpectedly weak data point highlights the risk of growth deceleration in emerging markets generally and China…

For India, oil prices currently stand at recent record highs (except possibly the oil India buys from Iran at a discount). Given that domestic petroleum is generally subsidized by the government, this spike is sure to put significant…

Paul De Grauwe, a professor at the London School of Economics, told Tom Keene on "Bloomberg Surveillance" today that the euro area is at risk because "so many big mistakes have been made." De Grauwe went on to say that the "ineptitude of…

Intense conflicts over water will probably not be confined to the developing world. So far, Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado have been able to make and keep agreements defining who gets how much of the Colorado River's…

This is clearly going to create headwinds for consumer sentiment and ultimately spending patterns, particularly when combined with other issues consumers are facing this year.

I’ll be watching a number of things in 2013 in order to get a better sense of what the future will bring. On January 22 Princeton University Press will be publishing my book, The Great Rebalancing: Trade, Conflict, and the Perilous Road…

As the winter storm pounded the north eastern United States on Friday, gasoline futures hit another high. The March delivery contract broke $3.06, indicating that retail prices for fuel will be going up.

Last Tuesday I said then that the debt ceiling fight would come first but that default on US public debt would be a step too far - and so Republicans would capitulate, forcing them to put their efforts into the sequester cuts. The biggest…