currencies

The Absolute Return Letter March 2009 "Many of today's policy proposals start from the view that "greed" and "incompetence" and "poor risk assessment" are the ultimate source of what went wrong. In fact, they were not the true cause at…

Here is yet another post from early last year which presages all of the problems we are seeing today. As I have often written, the fake recovery is just an attempt to paper over these problems. It won't work. Where Ireland, Switzerland,…

The video below gives an excellent view into the issues affecting European banking. Tom Keene, who is Bloomberg Radio's editor-at-large, sees the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the ultimate solution to the problems in Eastern Europe.…

Morgan Stanley Asia head Stephen Roach believes that Asia will weather the economic storm with a less severe downturn than the West. However, as the economies are predominantly export-led, he also believes that the countries are followers,…

When the euro was introduced about ten years ago, the pessimists didn't give it much chance of reaching its tenth anniversary. The euro, or so the argument went, was doomed from the outset because of the wide spread in economic performance…

What are the Swiss doing selling dollars? I don't have an answer to this question. But, I thought I would posit it because a reader tipped me off to a development via the Blog Alea:

Danish Prime Minister Fogh Rasmussen is preparing Denmark for admission to the Eurozone. Despite my skepticism about the Euro as a currency, I would say that Denmark is a perfect candidate for entry. The Danish economy is already very…

I am skeptical as to the economic benefits of the Eurozone. In my view, the Euro has always been more of a political construct than an economic one. Nevertheless, the Euro has functioned quite well as a leading international currency in the…

The European Central Bank cut its benchmark rate 50 basis points (0.50%) to 2% because of weakness in the Eurozone. While a cut was widely anticipated, it was not known whether the ECB would cut 25 or 50 basis points. However, the cut of…

With the economy weakening significantly around the globe, the budgets of sovereign nations are coming under increased pressure. As a result S&P has put a number of countries under review for potential credit downgrades. However, now,…