deleveraging

Major advanced economies have made mixed progress in repairing the private sector’s balance sheets. This column explores private sector deleveraging trends and calls for a set of policies that will return debt to safer levels. Monetary…

The last post was an attempt to describe a reasonable worse case scenario for the US real economy as relatively benign compared to 1937, a comparison making the rounds these days due to a piece by Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio. My point is that…

The title of this post is a bit alarmist. But what I intend to write is more about reasonable worst case economic scenarios that the Fed is looking to avoid. While a 1937-style downdraft is something to consider down the line, in the…

The world has not yet begun to deleverage its crisis-linked borrowing. Global debt-to-GDP is breaking new highs in ways that hinder recovery in mature economies and threaten new crisis in emerging nations – especially China. This column…

The conclusion of the recently released Geneva report is that debt is the Achilles heel of this cyclical recovery. The Geneva economists warn that, despite the widespread belief that a general deleveraging has occurred due to the Great…

This post is on the same topic of the US economy that I addressed yesterday. But I want to go a bit deeper and add more colour to my comments. Signs that the US economy’s cyclical outlook are improving are getting ever more numerous,…

The economic and business paradigm in place in the United States is predicated on a secular increase in household debt that I believe will not last through another cyclical downturn without serious deleveraging. The reason we saw…

The latest flow of funds data from the US Federal Reserve show that the great American household deleveraging may be over. This should add a credit accelerator to the US economy which maintains growth. Meanwhile analysts are increasingly…

Private and public debt in the Eurozone increased since the 2000s, and especially so in certain countries. This column presents evidence that high levels of private and public debt, together with deleveraging of all sectors, are especially…

I spoke at a Euromoney conference on inflation-linked products last year. My thesis at the time that deflation is the real problem and that inflation isn't going to be a concern - which has largely proved right - was out of step with most…