Forecasts

The Chinese property bubble is bursting Chinese wage pressure is rising Chinese search for oil has increased geopolitical tensions

What is the ECB likely to do come June? There has been a lot of speculation in the media about the ECB’s next move but the ECB has yet to make definitive statements on which way it is leaning and why. I believe quantitative easing is out of…

Today’s post is going to be short. The theme is income inequality. My thesis on this has been that globalization is a net transfer from the developed economy middle class to developed economy elites and the emerging market middle class. I…

Expect the ECB to do something in June, but not QE Ukraine is the top geopolitical risk Rotation into defensive names in the US is worrying China is exporting deflation Easy money is causing a reaching for yield

Jobless claims: a good coincident indicator of the US economy. If you look at changes in jobless claims it can also help you call turning points in the economy. I have done claims graphs a few times over the past six years but I haven’t…

I was reading a summary of Jeremy Grantham’s remarks in GMO’s recent quarterly analysis. And it occurred to me that a lot of what we see there is predicated on some embedded longer-term assumptions that I want to make clear. Grantham is…

I have been off since Thursday due to the Easter holiday. But I want to write my traditional Friday post today with a grab bag of different issues I am seeing. I actually just want to focus on the US this time.

My macro view for most of the global economy is upbeat. My only downbeat views concern deceleration of growth in emerging markets and froth in capital markets. But in the main, market and economic momentum is up and to the right. The…

It is now patently clear that US equity and corporate bond markets are overvalued. Much of the overvaluation has to do with low discount rates and the risk-on signal easy Fed policy has sent investors for over five years. Yet again, signs…

It’s not fashionable to be optimistic about Europe. But I have been a Europe bull since last April when we moved from the front-loaded austerity paradigm to a backloaded paradigm. And beginning in June 2013, I saw the data moving in that…