government

This is a belated commentary for Friday. I have a lot of links on the global growth slowdown today but I covered this earlier saying Weak global economic data signal likelihood of global recession. I wanted to highlight Marshall Auerback's…

The two charts below give one a sense of the relative size of the government debt markets in the euro zone as well as the size of those markets compared to each country's GDP. Estonia has both the smallest government debt market and the…

Hugh Hendry made some remarks about confiscation last week that I addressed in my TV appearance on RT's capital account (see video here). The gist of his comments was that he fears government's ability to confiscate wealth as a means of…

Here is the video everyone is talking about, Ron Paul and Paul Krugman debating the economy and economic policy. Enjoy.

This week's weekly commentary on markets and the economy features Spain. In my view, the potential for downside economic and portfolio risk has increased markedly as we realise that Spain is at risk and there is no plan B in the euro zone.…

A common denominator runs throughout recorded history: a rising proportion of debts cannot be paid. Adam Smith remarked that no government ever had repaid its debt, and today the same can be said of the overall volume of private-sector…

April 9, 2012 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the most infamous savings and loan fraud, Charles Keating’s, successful use of five U.S. Senators to escape sanction for a massive violation of the law. The Senators were Alan Cranston (D.…

One of our thematic points for Q2 is the increased importance of political factors for the investment climate. Dutch developments are consistent with this and the risk that the government collapses is rising.

This is a thematic post, I am also putting outside the paywall because there is a lot of chatter today about Spain needing to tap EU bailout funds this year. The messaging in the analyst community follows the thematic prediction I made in…

Rich nations worldwide have a problem with debt. In the past, such problems have been dealt with by several tactics, including “financial repression”. This column explains how the tactic works and documents its resurgence in the wake of the…