monetary policy

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…

This fall, oil prices have tumbled so quickly that the effect on inflation, monetary policy and the economy is likely to be dramatic. As yet, however, we don’t know what those effects are likely to be, in part because the economics…

Last night, Japan’s GDP figures for Q3 came in much lower than expected. GDP fell an annualized 1.6% versus expectations for an annualized increase of 2.2%. This is as large a miss as you will see, and it calls into question the economic…

Gavyn Davies has a column up over at the Financial Times, which I think is a masterpiece at integrating a number of threads from different economic schools of thought into a composite picture of the global economy that makes sense. His view…

The big news this morning is the US employment report. The headline numbers were all good, though the add to non-farm payrolls came in below expectations. While this was a good report, the wage-related data were disappointing. Some thoughts…

A couple of weeks ago I told you about two properties in London that I was familiar with as background for my post on house price inflation in the UK. What was clear from those two examples and dozens of others I found is that rental yields…

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…

The GDP and jobless claims numbers for the U.S. came out today and they confirm the continued solid pace of recovery that has taken shape since Q2 began. GDP growth came in at a 3.5% annualized and initial jobless claims were 287,000,…

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…

There are no big themes dominating the news today. So it is a perfect time to hit a couple of themes with an economic and market theme approach. Let’s talk banks, Japanese trade, the currency wars and deflation.