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22 minutes ago
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Ratings Matter for the Euro Area
As you all have heard, Friday was (again) S&P’s day in the limelight. The rating agency downgraded over half of the 16 Euro area countries put on credit watch negative in December 2011. A quick look at my feed shows several takes on S&P’s action: the Economist’s Free Exchange comments on the now soft-core country, [...]
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European Daily Catch: Unemployment and Retail
Global labor reports prevailed today, but the US employment report took center stage. I’ll not comment on that report, so as to keep with my generally all things European theme here at The Wilder View. However, a quick sift through my feed reveals rather cynical takes: see Dean Baker’s comments here and here; Spencer’s take here; Jake’s [...]
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What Is a Safe Asset?
Last month, David Beckworth at Macro and Other Market Musings had some interesting thoughts on the global shortage of safe assets. His essay got me thinking about what is a safe asset? Beckworth alludes to two definitions of ‘safe’: (1) a credit being AAA-rated, (2) satisfying a certain level of liquidity to be used in repo markets (an [...]
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Fractional Money Multipliers
Money multipliers – the stock of money divided by a measure of base money (generally reserves plus currency in circulation) – are dwindling to fractions of what they used to be. FT Alphaville draws our attention to this fact on the Euro area (EA) using SocGen’s analysis. The money multiplier is a representation of how [...]
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Santa Claus as a Social Planner
Merry Christmas to all readers of the EconoMonitor and The Wilder View! Here’s a nice little model I discussed in 2007: The Economics of Christmas! Hope that you enjoy; I do. (This commentary was written in my more ‘academic days’ when I was inundated with models of theoretical macro. As you have no doubt noticed, I’ve gone the [...]
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The Broad Sovereign Downgrade
Recently I’ve spent time thinking about global bond investors, especially those conservative investors that stick with the high-quality sovereigns. I’ve got news for them: the share of high-quality investment grade sovereigns – BBB- and above is investment grade - is shrinking. Some bullet points comparing ratings in December 2007 to December 2011: From a sample of 76 emerging [...]
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EA Infernal Devaluation Progressing
The EU answer to rebalancing portfolio and trade flows within the Euro area (EA) without currency devaluation is recession and deflation. They call this ‘internal devaluation’ – shifting relative prices by reducing domestic demand in the debtor countries, thereby shifting the terms of trade. Marshall Auerback calls it ‘infernal devaluation’. Marshall’s right. Today we got more [...]
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EA Spreads: Why Should the Trend Change?
They changed the title; but originally the NY Times reported “Euro Zone Agrees to Reinforce Maastricht Rules“. That’s exactly what EA policy makers agreed to last week – not much to bring home. The real shift in policy came from the ECB. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard highlights the ECB’s actions as ensuring some sort of bank profitability, while [...]
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EA BoP Guide: CA and KA – EA too Dependent on Portfolio Inflows?
This is part two of my multi-post commentary on the Euro area Balance of Payments (BoP). Yesterday, in part one, I compared the EA current account balance to its country-level cross section. Today’s post will be more instructive in nature, as I dig into the components of the EA current account (CA) and capital account (KA) balances. My general conclusion [...]
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EA Balance of Payments: the Current Account
I’ve been doing quite a bit of research on the balance of payments flows within the Euro Area (EA). Given the complexity of the balance of payments, there are too many angles to tackle in one post. Therefore, spanning the next week I will dedicate my commentary to the EA balance of payments. In this [...]
