deflation

In the past two weeks, a lot has happened in Europe. I would say the general tenor of the news flow has been downbeat. Nevertheless, I am mostly positive on Europe. I don't see an imminent eurozone breakup, nor do I see a further dip into…

So QE cannot possibly offset the effects of fiscal tightening in the lives of ordinary working people - the largest part of the population. In fact because it seems to discourage productive corporate investment, it may even reinforce…

There is an experiment being conducted in Japan, but the experiment isn’t Abenomics (which I suspect won’t work, and could end very badly). No, the experiment is about learning to grow old with dignity, not as individuals, but as societies.

Japan is stuck in a shrinking population trap, and neither monetary nor fiscal policy will adequately solve the problem. Continuing to run fiscal deficits in a deflationary environment will only means that government debt is pushed onward…

Whatever the case, the ECB will have to act in order to avoid the dangers of a deflationary spiral, which could take the Eurozone years (or even decades) to exit.

The Swedish krona is somewhat firmer today but it is the biggest loser among the major currencies this week. It has lost about 2.3% against the dollar and 2.1% against the euro. According to Bloomberg, this is the single biggest weekly…

Trade data for the US, Germany, Japan and China were released earlier today. While the US, Germany and China had robust export growth that caused their surpluses to swell, Japan's numbers showed weakness despite the recent drop in the value…

Three years on, I remain absolutely convinced that deflation, driven primarily by consumers eager to repair their balance sheets, will be a powerful force for many years to come but, at the same time, I must admit that I see worrying signs…

I participated in a Euromoney conference on investing in inflation this afternoon. I was on a panel of five right before the closing remarks by keynote speaker Dennis Gartman and I wanted to make a few remarks about what I learned. First,…

I haven't done the daily for a few days because I have been trying to get out a few more lengthy posts. But today I wanted to highlight the inflation issue because I will be speaking on a Euromoney panel about investing in inflation later…