credit

I have always thought that the soft landing/hard landing debate wholly misses the point when it comes to China’s economic prospects. It confuses the kinds of market-based adjustments we are likely to see in the US or Europe with the much…

The gist of the piece here is that, while I see a cyclical recovery that is gathering pace, the Achilles heel of the recovery from a sustainability perspective is wage growth. To the degree the Fed normalizes policy now before wage growth…

By Edward Hugh There has been lot’s of debate in the press and in academic circles over the last week or so about whether Italy’s latest contraction constitutes a triple dip recession or simply a continuation of what’s been going on over…

Michael Pettis has a good piece on debt and credit that I ran on the blog this morning. His thoughts on loss socialization are important not just in the context of China but also of other markets like Europe, the US, Canada and Australia…

Burgeoning debt in China was not an unlucky accident. It is fundamental to the way the growth model works. We coming closer to the 'Minsky Moment', in which the system requires an acceleration in credit growth simply to maintain existing…

Happy post-World Cup to you all. I missed my Friday catch-all post because I was out sick. So I am going to play catch-up today with a few thoughts on various topics. The BIS Let’s start with the BIS. In general, I defend the BIS view…

The 2014 BIS Annual Report warns again about the perils of ultra-easy monetary policy as it did in the lead-up to the Great Financial Crisis. I think the BIS could prove a Cassandra here and will explain below. Nevertheless, many refuse to…

The title here is a bit provocative I know. But it is really something I stole from an article about Stephen Roach’s view that I will use as a jumping off point for my Friday review.

I am not impressed with macro policy that is managed purely to give a cyclical boost to the economy at the expense of secular sustainability. That makes it hard to look at what’s happening with macro policy now without scepticism and…

Summary The ECB did the expected this morning and lowered interest rates enough to send bank deposit rates at the ECB into negative territory. The ECB also met market expectations with an additional easing measure by implementing an LTRO…