The Federal Reserve delivered as expected. Its economic assessment was little changed, not being swayed one way or the other by most of the high frequency data. It did recognize that inflation has been „running...
There is much talk of an ECB rate cut on Thursday. Many economists have forecast a cut after a disappointing series of German data last week. Even if the German economy did not contract in Q1 after contracting in...
There have been three recent developments in Spain: the new record high unemployment, the earnings reports of several large banks, and the government’s new fiscal forecasts and strategy. Spanish 10-year yields...
Italy is getting closer to putting together a grand coalition government. This has always seemed to us the most likely scenario, but the route to it has been circuitously torturous. Three considerations have led to...
This Great Graphic was in JP Morgan’s latest research. It is the cumulative into global ETFs, measure in billions of dollars. To be sure, it is not a comprehensive view of cross border equity flows. And...
This Great Graphic comes from a post on Vox by Nadege Jassaud and Heiko Hesse. It compares the non-performing loans as a percentage of total EU loans for a select number of countries. The read line is was...
This Great Graphic or some version of it has been circulating since the BOJ’s announcement last week. This version was on Sober Outlook, who took it from Credit Suisse. It shows the growth of central bank balance...
The ECB confirmed what the recent anecdotal reports hinted at, namely that deposits have been leaving Cyprus even before the crisis reached the fevered pace a couple of weeks ago. Specifically, earlier today it...
It is not being widely discussed, but we suspect the wage settlement in Germany over the weekend is an important development. The agreement that covers 765k state government workers in Germany, represented by Verdi, reached...
This Great Graphic was on CNN Money. It shows the yawning divergence between real hourly compensation and productivity gains in the US. The two moved in lock step in the first two decades after WWII. The decoupling was...