United States

Germany is a member of a currency union over which it has no monetary authority. So no one can accuse the country of ‘manipulating’ its currency. Yet, Germany is displaying huge current account surpluses that are illustrative of a dangerous…

This post was originally published at China Financial Markets. By Michael Pettis Foreign perceptions about the Chinese economy are far more volatile than the economy itself, and are spread across a fantastic array of forecasts. On one…

When one thinks about why the US has outperformed, a lot of the analysis is destined to focus on fiscal and monetary policy. And while I think that’s an important thought process to go through, I believe that bank recapitalization and shale…

Soft data in the US and Japan was not enough to spur central banks in either country into action over the last two days. For me, it highlights first how vulnerable the global economy is. But, more than that, it points to the ineffectiveness…

The minutes from the Federal Reserve Board's last meeting have come out and they are dovish. While on the one hand, we should praise the Fed for showing it is data-dependent as it has professed to be, on the other hand the abrupt change in…

The US economy - while still far from recession - is still downshifting. At the same time, the Federal Reserve - while less hawkish than in December - is still in tightening mode. This combination still makes recession a reasonable worst…

Recent data releases related to the Eurozone have been disappointing. This column argues that momentum from the long-delayed 2014-15 recovery is faltering because the Eurozone economy is affected, with a lag, by the US slowdown. The…

The Fed began to tighten monetary policy in May 2013, when it announced its intention to taper large scale asset purchases. Despite Fed chair Janet Yellen’s recognition in recent testimony before Congress that financial conditions had…

The US economy is not in a recession right now and the latest numbers on US GDP confirm this view. And while the headline growth number was weak, the consumer spending and personal income numbers are supportive of 2%ish growth into 2016.…

While the US economy has decelerated enough since mid-2015 to put me on recession watch, it has not reached the point of recession. Moreover, the data do not indicate a recession is in the offing in the near-term. Rather, a combination of…