demand destruction

One serious addendum I made to my 2011 outlook had to do with oil and commodity prices. While I am cautiously optimistic, there are a number of potential pitfalls to a rosy scenario. Here's what I said about oil and commodities:…

Andy Lees of UBS's London-based Equity Derivatives group had an interesting post this morning on the push in China to maintain sufficient energy resources in order to maintain economic growth. He writes: Yesterday China gave the…

by Edward Harrison Brent Crude is still trading above $98 a barrel. And agricultural commodities remain at extremely elevated levels. World food prices are at all-time highs. The worry is inflation in consumer prices that is not matched by…

It's high time I laid my cards on the table about 2011. I have hinted around my view in previous posts, promising to spell it out in detail. So, here it is: I am cautiously optimistic on the US and global economy for 2011. Let me explain…

Ever since Fred Sheehan published his post on the bifurcated view on "The 'Flations", I have been using this as a baseline way of talking about prices. Easy monetary policy is geared to raising prices. However, if the secular…

This is a must-see video that runs 30 minutes. Take the time to watch the whole thing. It is a real coup that CNBC got Grantham on their program.  Overall, Grantham's view is the same as mine. The Fed should get out of trying to use…

Nearly a month ago, back on May 5th, I highlighted some testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke before congress in a post labelled, “Bernanke expects recovery later this year". In his testimony, Bernanke used the phrase…

In July, I made my ten predictions for the markets and global economy for the rest of the year. Some of my predictions were pretty pedestrians, and some were fairly bold. Let's take a look and see how I'm doing.Here's what I originally…

Up until two days ago oil was crashing down toward $110 a barrel as demand growth estimates have been clipped. So what happened to peak oil? Nothing happened; peak oil should still be a concern. For a larger context on peak oil, see my…

I'm getting a lot of mail about the Rosenberg post and my mea culpa on inflation. To be blunt, a lot of you think I'm out to lunch and Rosenberg is too -- after all inflation is over 5% and that's just the bogus CPI measure our governments…