fiscal

The 2014 BIS Annual Report warns again about the perils of ultra-easy monetary policy as it did in the lead-up to the Great Financial Crisis. I think the BIS could prove a Cassandra here and will explain below. Nevertheless, many refuse to…

I am not impressed with macro policy that is managed purely to give a cyclical boost to the economy at the expense of secular sustainability. That makes it hard to look at what’s happening with macro policy now without scepticism and…

The European data out today were not particularly good. We saw a deceleration in the eurozone economy, that when combined with the deceleration in German inflation, suggests that deflationary forces could still threaten a debt deflationary…

By Michael Pettis It might seem almost churlish to wonder what would happen if Spain were to leave the euro. The official European position is that the battle of the euro has been pretty much won, and anyone who argues otherwise will be…

The big news in the markets today is the standoff in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian armed rebels and the Ukrainian military. This has European markets selling off. The potential for problems in eastern Ukraine is something we should…

While the credit expansion/savings reduction needs to continue to grow to support GDP growth, the credit expansion/savings reduction doesn’t need to ‘spike up’ proactively as it does when the fiscal tightening is proactive.

Themes for today: The US faces political constraints in a cyclical downturn that will limit government response The US private surplus is under assault Europe is improving and upgrades to bank stocks are bullish The Fed tends to…

The aim of the above header is to link two names in people’s minds, both of them Italian: Mario Draghi and Matteo Renzi. Naturally the idea is not original, the FT’s Peter Spiegel recently published an entire blog post (Does Renzi owe his…

Marshall Auerback was on CNBC yesterday afternoon talking to Kelly Evans and Steve Liesman on Closing Bell. And his read on the US economy is like mine, 1.5-2.0% underlying growth. He thinks the weak Q1 numbers are not just weather-related.…

By Marc Chandler Political developments in Italy are happening faster than Prime Minister Letta can maneuver. The economy he is overseeing is the poster child of ECB President Draghi's assessment of a weak, fragile and uneven recovery in…