Economic Data

Europe is growing again and I see this growth phase lasting a while unless something in the Greek negotiation derails it. And while the Greek negotiations are tense I still believe Greece is an outlier that has indeed been isolated, making…

A typical portfolio will almost certainly not deliver the required returns over the next decade. If ‘typical’ means a 60/40 approach, as already mentioned, then 2-4% annualised returns are what can realistically be expected. If ‘typical’…

My thesis for the global economy right now is that global nominal GDP growth will continue to slow, leading to more policy accommodation, with the outliers converging toward zero. The question mark in this is the Federal Reserve. Generally,…

I don’t think we got any new information from the economy or the Fed yesterday. While the GDP report was below expectations, it was exactly where the Atlanta Fed said it would be. And the Fed has not altered its stance. It is prepared to…

Greece is expected to submit a more complete list of reforms in order to free up funds so the country can service its obligations. Four times the Greek government has provided lists and four times the European group of finance minister…

Yesterday was a big conference day in Washington, D.C., with the IMF and World Bank meeting and with the Brookings Institution holding an event featuring the Greek and German finance ministers. While I attended the Brookings event, the…

By Michael Pettis When Isaac, an editor at Foreign Policy, sent me an email two weeks ago asking if I could write a piece on the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), I quickly wrote back promising 1,200 words within a few…

I have mentioned 1994 as a benign comparison for the US economy of 2015 as opposed to the 1937 comparison Ray Dalio made recently. Having looked at reasonable worst case scenarios with 1997 Japan as a model, I want to look at upside…

Yesterday I made up the phrase “The Four Horsemen of this rally” when discussing the bull market rally with a colleague. What I was trying to get at was the unsustainable nature of a divergence between top line revenue growth and the…

The important point is that returning to growth after the crisis may not be sufficient to facilitate political stability. The damage to the middle class is serious and Rajoy does not appear to appreciate that. The economic cost of…