financial repression

At the weekend, I saw three articles asking essentially the same question about sovereign debt crisis contagion: why Italy and why not Japan (the US or Germany)? Here's my answer.

Yesterday, I indicated that the FOMC has already considered offering unlimited quantitative easing to target specific interest rates during the second round of quantitative easing. I believe the Fed will do this in QE3, and apparently Bill…

Raghuram Rajan, one of the few mainstream economists to warn of the US housing bubble, has recently written a piece which is highly critical of US monetary policy. His view, one that I share, is that US policy favours debtors over savers in…

The financial repression that is being discussed is not in developing countries but in the advanced industrialized countries. The ostensible goal is to support the government bond markets. Moral suasion, the cajoling of investors are soft…

The Federal Reserve will be on easy street for a long time to come. Real interest rates will remain low, meaning debtors will be favoured over savers. Investors in fixed–income will take it on the chin.

Financial repression leads to investors' leveraging up, moving abroad, moving out on the risk curve or moving into riskier asset classes. Apparently, Pimco is employing all of these strategies. Will it work, though? I say greater risk…

Bill Gross: Low policy rates and the increasing negative real yields that they engender as inflation accelerates represent an immediate threat to investment portfolios. Bond prices don’t necessarily have to go down for savers to get skunked…

Now that the Fed has confirmed it won't raise rates and the dollar is dropping, for me it means that negative real rates will continue and that the currency wars are back on. I have comments on what negative real rates mean for investors. I…

The easy stance of developed economy central banks is driving money into emerging markets and fostering the accommodative stance of those central banks, fearful of more hot money flows or currency appreciation. Easy money in the face of…

You normally don't see these two phrases in a single headline, but they are very much connecting. I thought of this this morning when I read a post called Retirement in the Liquidity Trap by Tim Duy. Commenting on a Wall Street Journal…