Barack Obama has now come clean about his thinking on why his administration has decided to focus first on reducing the deficit and next on jobs. He fears a double-dip recession will occur if foreigners lose confidence in the U.S. dollar, causing interest rates to spike. 
This is nonsense and it demonstrates how much at [...]

This excerpt comes from the blog News from 1930 which gives us a day-to-day account of what was being reported in 1930 before the worst of the Great Depression hit.
“The unemployment situation in New York is critical. Unless it is speedily met, we face a winter of hunger and distress for families whose bread-earners are [...]

There are a lot of threads to tie together in today’s reporting of news in the auto sector.
General Motors has reported a third-quarter loss of $1.15 billion. But all indications are that car sales continue to outpace expectations in the United States.  Meanwhile, there are conflicting stories that GM both plans to pay back [...]

Nouriel Roubini, writing in the New York Daily News , said on Sunday that “unemployed Americans should hunker down for more job losses” given the likelihood of a job less recovery. This was as gloomy a piece as I have seen from Roubini in the past few months. He has clearly become more downbeat about [...]

Today, I want to run a few thoughts by you courtesy of John Mauldin.  In his recent weekly newsletter, he makes a number of points I have made here over the past few weeks and comes to a similar conclusion about the weakness of recovery and the likelihood of a double dip recession.
John Mauldin, Best-Selling [...]

Hat tip Barry Ritholtz
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The motivating factor?  this article in Politico:
President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year’s State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay other new domestic spending beyond jobs programs, according to top aides involved in the planning.
The president’s plan, which [...]

The following is a re-print of the latest monthly newsletter from Niels Jensen of Absolute Return Partners, published with the express permission of the author. Visit www.arpllp.com to learn more about Absolute Return Partners. You can reach the firm by email at info@arpllp.com.
This post on taxes and budget deficits should remind one of three recent [...]

When I read Ed’s recent piece “Japan: stimulus without reform leads to a policy cul de sac,” I couldn’t help but think he is wrong about Japan.
Supporting aggregate demand
The problem is taxes. In Japan, taxes are too high relative to the desire for spending and savings. Policy makers need to stop taking so many yen [...]

This article by Peter Tasker, a well-regarded financial analyst in Asia, comes via the Financial Times (hat tip Marshall). He sees an enormous bubble forming in China – and parallels to Japan circa 1987:
Emerging markets, it seems, have had a good crisis. In contrast to the debt-ridden G7 economies, they have quickly resumed their growth [...]