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Not raising the debt ceiling will not mean default, instead it will mean other federal spending will get cut

Typical street review of today’s numbers from Goldman. As suspected, look for continued downward revisions to initial 4% Q2 estimates. And note the graph below showing employment as a % of the population. The economy continues to be demand…

The separation of abodes from investments should work to the advantage of rentals in future years. We’re not suggesting that Americans will give up on single-family owner-occupied housing. The idea of a single-family home of your own is…

Each new version of the European debt crisis will spook the bond markets yet again. When you look at the economies of the euro-peripheral countries, it is hard to see how they can dig themselves out without a great deal of pain and serious…

QE is, in fact, a ‘crop failure’ for the dollar. The Fed’s shifting of securities out of the economy and replacing them with clearing balances removes interest income. And the lower rates from Fed policy also reduces interest paid to the…

Guest Author Polyvios Petropolous argues that the European Union must put in place the contingency plans for a Greek debt restructuring in secret before the plan is announced and executed. To end bailouts without such a plan in place would…

The following editorial by Timo Soini, the head of the True Finns party in Finland, on perceived corporatism in the EU bailouts of the eurozone periphery appeared in Monday's Wall Street Journal. We are reprinting it here because the…

Systemic risk is not driven by close macro integration. If this were the case, US states would have far higher exposure to systemic credit risk. Instead, systemic exposure is very high for European sovereigns. The roots of systemic risk lie…

The latest figures from the US show that the consumer price index rose 0.5% in March, whilst the core personal consumption expenditure price index rose only 0.1%. This column explains the roles of these competing measures and argues that US…

We debated whether to call Section 3 "Devaluation & Transformation" or 'Transformation and Devaluation" because we could not be sure (or possibly know) which would be generally recognized first. We finally opted for "Devaluation and…