Archive for November, 2011
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On Europe: Perhaps This Is the Week that Fewer People Listen to Nonsense
This may well turn out to be the week during which the markets finally break the repeated rally on rhetoric pattern that has previously given the “Euro-crats” more than their fair share of opportunities to delay meaningfully addressing European imbalances. While over the weekend still more bandages were being prepared to cover festering financial-economic wounds [...]
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Inside the Wizard’s Hat with BAC
I have a good friend, a hedge fund manager, who refers to the market charts for period from February 12, 2009 to March 26, 2009 as “the upside down Harry Potter hat.” During that period the S&P 500 made a stunningly rapid descent from 833, to 676 on March 9th, and then recovered by March 26th. [...]
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On Printing Euros and the Real German Fear (hint, it’s not 1923)
I am convinced that each time the € comes under pressure the Germans start screaming “NEIN, PRINT NICHT!” They are at it again today. As far as the German government is concerned, the European Central Bank is not, like other central banks, ever to be considered a lender of last resort. And in the absence [...]
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In a Sense, We are All Monetarists Now (Much to Bernanke’s Chagrin)
There has been much made of having the Fed target nominal GDP growth and employ monetary actions to achieve growth without regard to the component thereof derived from inflation. The concept was the subject of an op-ed recently by former Chairwoman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, Christine Romer, in which Romer challenged the [...]
