Economic Data

I was on CNBC yesterday ahead of Ben Bernanke's speech explaining the FOMC's recent decision to add an explicit inflation target to its decision to extend its rate easing/permanent zero policy. My conclusion: the Obama mortgage plan and…

Given what we see as a basically hands off policy with regards to the exchange rate when MXN is appreciating, we see more potential upside for MXN compared to, say, BRL, where Brazilian authorities are clearly going to work against further…

Many observers will posit the euro's resilience today to the flash PMI reading for January where both the manufacturing and service sector readings were above expectations. The flash manufacturing diffusion index stood at 48.7 vs 47.3…

Roubini said that the "probability of a recession in the United States is lower than 60 percent right now." On Europe, he said that even if an agreement is reached on Greece, "there are going to be so many holdouts that then they’ll have a…

There has been a lot of discussion about whether China's growth will slow enough to be considered a hard landing and what that would mean for the global economy and investors. Below is an account from Bloomberg featuring Goldman Sachs Chief…

That's a full percentage lower than Q1 2011. So clearly the Chinese economy has slowed in reaction to both global slowing and the Chinese authorities' attempts to cool asset and price inflation.

Perhaps the main point to take to heart from the events of the last week is the way the recent ECB liquidity measures have apparently been able to stabilise the debt crisis, at least for the time being, even while it is not clear that they…

The US dollar is trading within the ranges that were seen prior to the weekend as the market awaits fresh developments. The market remains apprehensive as additional rating fallout is expected, ahead of a resumption of Greek PSI talks and…

The myth that Greeks are lazy and Germans are industrious and that this has some significance in the sovereign debt crisis is everywhere one turns. It is false. The issues for Greece are not about working longer hours but are ones of…

I thought I would flag this for paid members. The jobless claims data for the last week came out and it jumped fairly significantly from 375,000 to 399,000. It had been in the 375,000 range for a number of weeks prior.