As a result of my meetings and sightseeing, I have been neglecting the blog. I have a couple of hours before my morning London Walks tour, so I just wanted to do the delayed addendum to Monday’s column. Since some of the recent data releases are directly related to the column, this will also be … Read more
Below is my Hurriyet Daily News column for this week, which you can also read at the Daily News website. No cheesy titles this time around, and no wordplays, either. I will have a proper addendum later on, as I have many more things to say. But as I mentioned in that post, yesterday’s guest … Read more
Aug. 5 (Bloomberg) — Nouriel Roubini, chairman of Roubini Global Economics LLC, Joshua Rosner, managing director of Graham Fisher & Co. and Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research LLC talk with Bloomberg’s Michael McKee about Standard & Poor’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating to AA+ from AAA. Bloomberg contributor Christina Romer also speaks with … Read more
Standard & Poor’s – a private company – designated, but not regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States as a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Agency (NRSRO) – downgraded the government that provides the rating agency with its entire franchise. Perhaps the most incredible example of biting the hand that feeds you … Read more
Instead of instant comment on the jobs report alone, today we offer a compendium of observations on this tumultuous week. The jobs picture: Today’s report happily smoothed out the trailing three months to an average of 72,000 new jobs per month. It was welcome, albeit that we are tracking at less than half the 150,000 … Read more
Oh, come on Edward, surely this time you are going too far? The Germany economy is the strongest in Europe, time and again we have been told it is powering and powering ahead. It has just demonstrated record growth performances. So where the hell could you possibly get the crazy idea that Germany might be … Read more
As Mr Zapatero put it on Saturday, when he announced the date of Spain’s general election, the decision “is in the country’s interest” since from now on there will be certainty, and “certainty is stability”. While it is quite possible that almost all of Spain’s politicians shared this sentiment, and welcomed the bringing forward of … Read more
The Last-minute $3 trillion deal is paving way for deeper political and economic polarization in America. Since mid-May, when the U.S. debt hit $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, the nation has lived on borrowed time. During the past three months, tension and friction has escalated dramatically as Washington has debated an array of deficit-plans before the … Read more
Almost three decades ago, Herbert Stein, the former Chairman of Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers, lamented that the United States had no long-run budget policy—no policy for the size of deficits and for the rate of growth of the public debt over a period of years. He pointed out that Congress makes annual budget decisions … Read more
