Big boys usually get their way, particularly in banking http://t.co/qIWQuAk6p8
30 minutes ago
Archive for June, 2010
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Yield Curves in Japan and the US: Similar but Not the Same
Andy Harless presents the case for a double dip (second recession) – I would re-order #1 and #2 on that list – and that for a sustained recovery. #6 of Andy’s case for a sustained recovery (he calls it Case Against a Second Dip) caught my attention, pointing me to an earlier Paul Krugman article about positively-sloped yield curves in a zero-bound policy environment.
In a related article, Krugman argues that a current policy of near-zero short-term rates precludes the lowering further of future short-term rates. Therefore, the steep yield curve reiterates that rates have nowhere to go but up rather than that the economy is expected to improve.
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Another Blow to the U.S. Labor Force
The Senate voted down the American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act of 2010, 57 to 41 (see an earlier version of the CBO’s estimate here for a breakdown of the Bill). The emergency extensions to weekly unemployment benefits will now expire, leaving many without government support as the labor market improves at snail speed. [...]
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GIIPS Labor Costs Not Moving in the “Competitive” Direction
The GIIPS (Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain) hope: exports. Fiscal austerity crimps the saving of the private sector. And provided the governments make good their plans to put on the fiscal straight-jacket, there’s no other impetus for growth except foreign demand. Financial crises are often accompanied by currency crises, i.e., Sweden 1991, which drives export growth if there is sufficient external demand. For Sweden, there was.
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The Hourless Recovery
There was an interesting blog post over at the Macroblog (Atlanta Fed) regarding productivity. John Robertson and Pedro Silos highlight the contributions to GDP growth from various factors, including productivity and employment. One of their findings:
As this chart shows, relatively high labor productivity growth during a recession is not a phenomenon isolated to the 2007–09 and 2001 recessions (for present purposes, the end of the most recent recession is identified with the trough in GDP in the second quarter of 2009). All recessions from WWII through 1970 also featured sizable growth in labor productivity.
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I Understand Why Asia’s Worried About Europe
On the forefront of the Chinese economic releases this week was the trade data, where headlines shouted +48.5% Y/Y export growth in May. This report didn’t go unnoticed in Washington, as renewed obsessions with the Chinese peg against the US dollar fired up again.
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China’s Not the Answer for the Eurozone
“Go long whatever Chinese consumers buy and go short Chinese capital spending (construction) plays. Consistently, go long tech/short material stocks.”
That is the first sentence of a BCA Research report’s executive summary on China equity strategy (link not available). Rather than a global equity strategy, I’d like to put this into an economic growth context via trade…and with Europe.
