United States

I was on BNN this afternoon talking to presenter Howard Green and The Economist's Ryan Avent about Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's testimony before congress today. You can read Bernanke's prepared remarks here and watch the video clip here.…

Commercial banks and savings institutions insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reported aggregate net income of $34.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2012, a $9.3 billion (36.9 percent) improvement from the $25.3…

Serious technical damage on the foreign currencies is being inflicted. The euro is falling through the uptrend drawn off last July (Draghi-induced) lows. It comes in just below $1.3200 today. The next technical target is near…

The lessons for China, if I am right, are that China should forego the idea of nurturing national champions and should instead encourage brutal domestic competition. Beijing should also eliminate subsidies to production, the most important…

Historical data shows conditions peaking in late winter to early spring and declining later in the year.

This is clearly going to create headwinds for consumer sentiment and ultimately spending patterns, particularly when combined with other issues consumers are facing this year.

Akira Amrai, Japan's economic minister, announced: "It will be important to show our mettle and see the Nikkei reach the 13,000 mark by the end of the fiscal year (March 31)... We want to continue taking (new) steps to help stock prices…

Trade data for the US, Germany, Japan and China were released earlier today. While the US, Germany and China had robust export growth that caused their surpluses to swell, Japan's numbers showed weakness despite the recent drop in the value…

The US trade figures for Q4 2012 came out this morning and they surprised analysts by showing a trade deficit that shrank 21% to $38.5 billion in December. According to Bloomberg News this was a lower deficit than any of 73 economists…

My thesis these past few years is that a fiscal retrenchment to reduce deficits in the US was likely to lead to a shortened business cycle. I have been saying since 2013 began that politics favoured the United States going into austerity…