European breakup

Very quickly here: Yesterday, British Prime Minister Theresa May gave an informal address to the nation from her couch at a the Prime Minister's country retreat, Chequers.The informality of the address is what first caught people’s eye.…

I want to get to the Fed decision later today. But, before that, let me update you on Brexit under the rubric "Brexit as Europe's Lehman moment". I am thinking of it this way because many policy makers want to avoid the political and…

Very quick here on Brexit. British Prime Minister Theresa May has now submitted a formal request to the EU to extend the Article 50 time period to June 30th. The reason for the extension is that Britain has nearly run out of time, and it…

Equities continued their rally today, both in the US and globally. While the US rally was impeded by bad news for Boeing, the S&P 500 did eke out a gain on the back of a rally in tech. Cisco, for example, is up 29% since it bottomed on…

I have a number of threads to address here. The first is that we got two big pieces of economic data out of the US this morning, one backward looking and the other coincident or forward looking. And I want to break down. My overall take is…

May's stalling tactic hasn't worked In the two months since British Prime Minister Theresa May decided to postpone a Parliamentary vote on her deal with the EU, I have been predicting she would be forced to delay implementation of Article…

A detour to the other side of the pond I have two big picture issues on my mind this morning. The first is the US economy and the US policy response. I think the Neil Irwin piece in the New York Times encapsulates a lot of the thinking on…

It's news Friday time. Like last week, I want to switch things up a bit and focus on the news. I am going to present a news story. And then I am going to expand on it, riffing off it and giving you 'my take' on the story. Hopefully, this…

China's slowdown Let's start with China today because yesterday the Chinese released their worst growth figures in 28 years. The 6.4% growth number was expected. Even so, the problems are large. Here's how Reuters described it yesterday:…

The euro is “celebrating” its 20th anniversary this month, but they aren’t popping corks across the continent. The underlying assumption of a common currency—namely, that it would lead to a convergence of the member countries’ production,…