inflation

Andy Xie believes ultra-low interest rates in the U.S. and elsewhere are fuelling an asset price bubble which will pop dramatically in 2012.  In his view, the policies of the world’s central banks are reckless and will lead to worse…

As we discuss sovereign debt levels, currencies and competitiveness, it bears remembering that interest rates are at the heart of many of these debates. To the degree debt service costs are the only measure used to determine how high a…

This is a post I just wrote over at Yves Smith’s site Naked Capitalism in response to a reader request. Marshall Auerback has already written a reply as well and I will post this later today. A reader at Naked Capitalism asked us to…

Morgan Stanley’s piece on Treasuries Priced for Perfection...for Now! is pretty bearish. The basic gist is that while the ten-year represents fair value today, because inflation expectations have become unanchored, Morgan Stanley expects…

Andy Xie thinks the Fed is on an inflationary path.  Last month, he wrote an article in Caijing which says that ‘stagflation lite’ is the Federal Reserve’s preferred outcome. What’s interesting is his recent article about the need for…

When I read Ed’s recent piece “Japan: stimulus without reform leads to a policy cul de sac,” I couldn’t help but think he is wrong about Japan. Supporting aggregate demand The problem is taxes. In Japan, taxes are too high relative to the…

Former Morgan Stanley economist Andy Xie joins other famed prognosticators like Nouriel Roubini in worrying about an incipient asset bubble. The Rosetta Stone Advisors board member sees the huge increase in money supply created by central…

Steve Horwitz had an interesting read last week on Friedrich von Hayek, the Nobel Prize winning Austrian School economist. Von Hayek is best known for his 1944 Libertarian call to arms “Road to Serfdom” and is generally considered one of…

Morgan Stanley has an interesting piece out this morning called Debtflation. In the past, they have raised alarm bells over what they see as embedded inflation in the loose monetary policy presently being followed by most central…

Wolfgang Munchau of the Financial Times wrote a very important comment piece in today’s Financial Times. In it he said that central banks are targeting asset prices to avoid the brunt of cyclical downturns. This policy is inducing asset…