currencies

The bear is growling and things are looking grim. Hold on for dear life. Today is going to be ugly. Let's just hope we don't start seeing folks lining up at their local ATM just in case.Where are my gun and kruggerands?

I might have egg all over my face quicker than quick about my $150 oil call. It seems the Fannie-Freddie bailout chatter is spooking stock markets, currency markets and the oil market. This is going to be a volatile day.The dollar dropped…

Zeitenwende, a German-language blog from Switzerland I subscribe to made a very good point this past holiday weekend after the Dow reached bear territory. U.S. investors had lost 20% on the Dow, but European investors would have lost much…

Oil prices aren't high because of greedy oil companies or backstabbing middle eastern countries. Oil prices are high because of easy money. That is the message of David Uren in today's Australian. I subscribe to his view but add in peak…

As the Euro celebrates its tenth anniversary, Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, says:"The question is whether the eurozone countries and their citizens have cause to celebrate. The answer is uncertain, given the zone’s…

I am a Euroscpetic. I admire the political will of Europe's grand designers in creating the Euro, but I have always felt that harmonisation would be a painful process fraught with tension - especially during economic downturns. And so it is…

Caroline Baum has a great column at Bloomberg News today about U.S. Dollar policy. The basic thrust of the column was about asking Ben Bernanke to put his money where his mouth is. The Fed can talk all it wants -- about the Dollar and…

The U.S. Dollar (USD) seems to have stabilized against most major floating currencies. This includes the British Pound, The Euro, The Canadian, Aussie and New Zealand Dollar, the Swiss Franc and the Japanese Yen. However, many market…

Barack Obama, speaking at a gathering in Gary, Indiana, made some very accurate comments about the dollar's weakness and its causes (see Reuters story)."We are spending all our money, spending overseas and spending dollars and nobody is…

Note from June 2010: You'll forgive me if I have conflated private and public sector debt below as if they are the same. They are not. When I speak of deficit spending in the same voice as private sector debts, I really point to deficits to…