education

Okay, let me go right to Peter's comment from yesterday about fixing the system using the Arizona piece as a jumping-off point. I'm going to be talking about the US here. But some of what I say is probably relevant elsewhere as well.…

The title of this daily post is a bit dramatic, I know. But that's what I came up with when I thought about some of the themes I intend to write about today. It's on my mind because of the news cycle and what I've been reading. But some…

The minutes from the Federal Reserve Board's last meeting have come out and they are dovish. While on the one hand, we should praise the Fed for showing it is data-dependent as it has professed to be, on the other hand the abrupt change in…

The US economy’s upswing over the last six years has been predicated on credit like the cycle before it because wage growth has been lacklustre. I want to describe where credit activity has created a lift in consumer spending and in capital…

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…

Europe’s PMI show a divergence between Germany and France China’s manufacturing sector is still contracting The US student debt problem is growing

There are two potential issues with the current re-leveraging cycle. First, the increase in the latest report, outside of real estate related mortgages as shown in the chart below, was primarily driven by increases in student and auto loan…

As I mentioned last week, I am on a winter break. So I haven’t been able to post over the past several days. But I have been following the news flow and wanted to make a few comments on what I am seeing regarding the US.

Standard macroeconomic theory did not help foresee the crisis, nor has it helped understand it or craft solutions. This columns argues that both the New Classical and New Keynesian complete markets macroeconomic theories not only did not…

By Sober Look The US Congress is nearing a compromise on the issue of student loan interest rates. Apparently loan rates will be changed from fixed to floating with an overall cap (see story). While rates are important, there is a much…