fiscal

Despite, the high cost of gasoline/petrol in Europe due to tax, the fact that Europe is a large net importer of oil means the decline in oil price will be more of a boost for that continent than it is to North America where concerns about…

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.”

This is going to be a relatively short note focused on what is going on in Japan because of the news that Japan has ramped up its program of quantitative easing to new heights. Coming on the heels of the US Federal Reserve’s announcement…

I have three areas I want to explore today: earnings reports, China and Europe. The earnings reports are mixed but generally good enough to support continued job growth and economic momentum through this fourth quarter. I also want to deep…

The gist of the piece here is that, while I see a cyclical recovery that is gathering pace, the Achilles heel of the recovery from a sustainability perspective is wage growth. To the degree the Fed normalizes policy now before wage growth…

Earlier today, I had an interesting back and forth on Twitter with Edward Hugh, Claus Vistesen and Matthew Lynn about Europe and the ECB. I think we all believe there is more pain to come for Europe and likely there will be writedowns. But…

Happy post-World Cup to you all. I missed my Friday catch-all post because I was out sick. So I am going to play catch-up today with a few thoughts on various topics. The BIS Let’s start with the BIS. In general, I defend the BIS view…

Last week, I wrote a fairly comprehensive piece laying out some of the macro issues around the Fed and other central banks’ ultra-easy monetary policy. The gist of that piece was that, due to the political economy, monetary policy is now…

We posted this in November, but are re--posting now because it is relevant. Hat tip goes to Barry Ritholtz who published it over at the Big Picture recently. Also see two previous posts on this site from November related to this one, based…

Markit's June Manufacturing PMIs for the Eurozone came out this morning. And overall, the numbers showed less strength across the board, with France showing particular weakness. You can see that Spain and Ireland were doing well though.…