Sony considering evaluating proposal from Third Point LLC to spin off part of its movie and music business: Nikkei #breaking
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Global Macro Channel: Latest Posts
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Asia
Excess German Savings, not Thrift, Caused the European Crisis
One of the reasons that it is been so hard for a lot of analysts, even trained economists, to understand the imbalances that were at the root of the current crisis is that we too easily confuse national savings with household savings. By coincidence there was recently a very interesting debate on the subject involving several economists, [...]
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Global Macro
Sovereign Debt Concerns in 2013
Interest rates on government debt for a number of European countries– notably Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Spain– shot up considerably during 2010-2012. Those yields have fallen significantly from their peaks, though these five countries still face higher borrowing costs than most other countries in Europe. Yields on long-term government bonds, Jan 2009 to April [...]
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Global Macro
‘Hard Sell?’ Canada Doubles PR Budget to Promote Tar Sands in U.S.
Canada is, according to the U.S. Energy Administration, the leading source of United States crude oil imports, which average 9.033 million barrels per day (mbpd), with Canada sending 2.666 mbpd southwards to the U.S. Mexico is second with 1.319 mbpd and Saudi Arabia third with 1.107 mbpd. The EIA notes, “Canada is one of the world’s five largest [...]
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Global Macro
Has House Price Deflation Begun in Canada?
Yesterday, the Teranet-National Bank National Composite House Price Index for Canada was released. It showed that 12-month home price inflation in Canada was down to 2.0%, the lowest level since November 2009. And given the huge amount of talk in Canada about a potential housing bubble, there is a worry that this is the beginning of a housing bust. You [...]
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Great Leap Forward
Hyman Minsky and the Employer of Last Resort
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned Hyman Minsky’s new book, “Ending Poverty: Jobs, Not Welfare”, less than $14 at Amazon. There is also a Kindle version. Take a look at the cover: MinskyFullCover3-14 – Minsky looking like a bit of a rougue! Here’s a link to Amazon (cut and paste if it doesn’t work):http://www.amazon.com/Ending-Poverty-Jobs-Not-Welfare/dp/1936192314/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1364998534&sr=1-2 I thought you [...]
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Global Macro
Doing Business at the World Bank
A showdown is looming at the World Bank over whether to discontinue or water down the Bank’s annual “Doing Business” Report. As reported here, and blogged about here, and here, China is leading the charge against the report, which is one of the Bank’s most controversial and influential projects. The U.S. government has been lobbying in favor of Doing Business, but so far [...]
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Global Macro
There are No Currency Wars! We Are Just Devaluing
(With apologies to The Weather Girls), it’s now raining men Yen! Japan has opened a new front in the “currency wars”, a term coined by Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega in 2010. The US, UK and Switzerland are already enjoined, with Europe likely to take up arms shortly. Nations which constitute around 70% of world output are “at war”, pursuing [...]
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Global Macro
Current Monetary and Fiscal Policies Need to Be Replaced
Reports of the important recent IMF conference ‘Rethinking Macro Policy II: First Steps and Early Lessons’ suggest that it was refreshing and informative. What appears (from the reports) to have been largely overlooked at the conference, however, was a rethinking of the interrelationships and scope for improved coordination between monetary and fiscal policy. From a [...]
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Global Macro
Banking on Reform: Can Volcker, Vickers and Liikanen Resolve the Too-Important-to-Fail Conundrum?
The global regulatory landscape governing banks has changed from its pre-crisis status quo. In addition to the Group of Twenty advanced and emerging economies led global regulatory reforms, like Basel III, the United States and the United Kingdom have decided to directly impose limits on the scope of banks’ businesses. The European Union is contemplating [...]
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Global Macro
Macro Overview
The US dollar is consolidating the gains seen at the end of last week. The greenback briefly pushed through the JPY102 level in Tokyo, but this was not sustained. Meanwhile, the global equities are mostly lower, though the Nikkei tacked on another 1.2% to reach a new 5.5 year high. Softer Chinese data may have [...]
