Economic Data

In his daily commentary today, Andy Lees of the Macro Strategy Partnership noted that, "the US macro surprise index is now -7.90, the European index is -69.20 and the G10 index at -32.8." What he is saying is that the data are weakening and…

The overarching theme here is that the economy of Europe is in tatters and this is causing a re-think of the policy course. In my view, the political space for the re-think is limited and will ultimately entail some tacked on growth…

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…

My quick take is that the leadership is saying all the right things, but they have been saying these things for quite a while – nearly two years in the case of Li Keqiang, the new premier. The constraints they face, however, have neither…

I am still on vacation here through Monday but the jobs number in the US was so ugly I had to comment briefly. The unemployment rate came in at 7.6% and 88,000 jobs were added to non-farm payrolls. The consensus estimates were for 7.7%…

By Marc Chandler The shockingly disappointing non-farm payrolls growth of 88k has sent the dollar reeling. The 61k upward revisions to the Jan and March figures and the smaller than expected trade deficit were not sufficient offsets.…

By Sober Look As discussed earlier (see post) the French economy continues to struggle. The nation's consumer recession is now thought to be worse than Italy's. Markit (Trevor Balchin): - “France has overtaken Italy as having the worst…

Quick note here on the US and the UK to change things up a bit from the Cyprus obsession.

Now the bad times are back, Paul Krugman is trying resuscitate IS-LM, a model published by John Hicks in 1937 that seeks to explain the relationship between interest rates, and real output in goods and services and money markets. I argue…

Moody's released the following statement in conjunction with a ratings action it took earlier today on three Dutch banks