credit

In the first paragraph of my book A Demon of Our Own Design (Wiley, 2007) I observe that “You don't deliberately obliterate hundreds of billions of dollars of investor money. And that is at the heart of this book – it is going to happen…

Today I thought I would try a little experiment by beginning to write a daily commentary. I have been thinking about doing this for a while and decided I needed to give it a go here because I don't have an in-depth article I am working on.…

Sub-investment-grade loans continue to perform well, driven by demand for floating rate product. As an example, the chart below compares the performance of Invesco's "Senior Income" fund (VVR) - which mostly holds loans of…

In the U.S. and in euro countries, policies aimed at stimulating exports are considered an effective response to lagging growth and recession. Viewing a net export balance as an economic virtue and a growth engine is a relic of Mercantilism…

When massive private and public sector debts result in a credit collapse and recession, the efforts to pare down the debt is deflationary. Measures to inflate our way out of the situation are likely to fail as households are attempting to…

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…

In November, soon after France and Belgium were forced to pump another 5.5 billion euros into bailed out lender Dexia, the ratings agency Moody's stripped France of its AAA sovereign debt rating. The interesting bit was that Moody's…

The shareholders and subordinated bond holders of SNS Reaal are now fighting an alleged expropriation at the Dutch Council of State. In addition, these stakeholders are contesting the Dutch government's position that shareholders and…

The rise and rise of Japanese debt is far from benign, and the dynamic, we are convinced, will at some point become unsustainable. Unfortunately by the time we reach that point it will be too late. Indeed, given that we agree with Krugman…

According to the Irish Times, the government of Ireland has entered into a deal with the ECB to cut the country's debt by liquidating the nationalised Irish bank Anglo Irish. As I noted in the Saturday post on Ireland's superior economic…