currencies

Two weeks ago I told you that Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s humiliating defeat to Merkel had narrowed options to sovereign bailout, monetisation or default for Spain. Now that the Spanish bank bailout is unraveling and Catalonia is…

By Michael Pettis Three weeks ago the Wall Street Journal published my OpEd piece about concern that China may try to make the rebalancing process less painful by allowing the RMB to depreciate. In the piece I argue that this isn’t as…

By Paul De Grauwe, Professor of international economics, London School of Economics, and former member of the Belgian parliament and Yuemei Ji, Economist, LICOS, University of Leuven This post was first published at VoxEU Germany’s large…

I was on RT's Capital Account on Friday night talking to Lauren Lyster about QE and the conversation moved more into the realm of fiat currency and government's coercive taxing power. This is particularly relevant given arguments within…

I note that several of the policy mistakes listed above date back to the same period, namely the late 1990s. Not only does it demonstrate the gung-ho approach of the time, but it also goes to show that policy mistakes do not necessarily…

By Marc Chandler The US dollar is consolidating last week's losses in largely uneventful activity.  In fact, consolidation is the general theme in the broader capital markets as well.   Equity markets are narrowly mixed, with the MSCI Asia…

By Sober Look Economists continue to insist that there is no connection between Fed's monetary expansion and increases in commodity prices, particularly agricultural products globally (discussed here). Here is a typical comment:  If it is…

By Sober Look Analysts often talk about how the weak euro helps exporters in the Eurozone, particularly Germany because of its massive export sector. But is Germany the main beneficiary? Which other nations want the euro to weaken further?…

This Great Graphic comes from an email I received from Thomson Reuters. It charts the nominal effective exchange rates (NEER)of the dollar, euro, Swiss franc and Australian dollar. It is weighted by trade partner, but is not adjusted for…

It is clear that lending to Spanish banks is now funded entirely via TARGET2 (borrowing from the rest of the Eurosystem) rather than with deposits. In fact deposits at the Bank of Spain by the Spanish government and Spanish banks (excess…