Europe

The European situation is still flirting with recession, if we look at the latest PMI data. I think the drop in oil prices will give the Europeans an unmitigated boost but the longer-term situation is still dire given the policy framework…

Tim Duy wrote a post on his blog on Sunday about his optimism about the US economy that got me thinking and I want to use it as a launching pad for a discussion about baseline economic scenarios. My baseline is positive, optimistic if you…

The latest batch of data points coming out of the global economy are a mixed bag. Some point to continued robust retail sales in the U.S. but other points show weakness in expected capital expenditure and hiring globally, while others show…

Right now, the global economy is slowing, with problems in Japan, China, Europe and the Emerging Markets. Only North American growth has remained strong as 2015 approaches. The dip in oil prices changes all of that. While a further fall…

Despite my upbeat view on the U.S., there are considerable headwinds to the global economy. We see this in the nexus of slowdowns in China and Europe and the decline in commodities, gold and oil which intersect with energy high yield bonds…

I stole this title from the Wall Street Journal because that was takeaway #1 in their post on the 5 takeaways on eurozone GDP. It seems apt but what does it mean? For me it means that the eurozone is at stall speed, vulnerable to crashing…

The Germans are saying, “we want the euro and we want to be good European partners, but not on any terms. We will not be in a union that fosters ever-increasing levels of government debt.”

Gavyn Davies has a column up over at the Financial Times, which I think is a masterpiece at integrating a number of threads from different economic schools of thought into a composite picture of the global economy that makes sense. His view…

US elections Just to follow up on yesterday’s two posts, exit polling data from Tuesday confirm what I was saying about disenchantment with the U.S. economy despite the positive headlines. 58% of those casting ballots said they were…

Although I think China is clearly much more integrated as an optimal currency zone than Europe is today, it is probably less integrated than the US (I will use the US and Europe as the two extreme cases between which China falls). China of…