Marshall Auerback here with some thoughts on the UK given the recent stellar performance of Sterling.
“The Conservative belief that there is some law of nature which prevents men from being employed, that it is ‘rash’ to employ men, and that it is financially ‘sound’ to maintain a tenth of the population in idleness for an [...]

I received a high-quality note from Marc Chandler, Chief Currency Strategist at Brown Brothers Harriman, which I think worthy of posting.  He makes several points which are game changers regarding fiscal and monetary policy.  They are:

Don Kohn, an influential Fed official, thinks that the Fed has kept long-term interest rates down in the United States, [...]

This past week, I caught an article in Wirschaftswoche (WiWo), the German Business Week, which suggested that the South Koreans were very confident about their economy and had learned from the Asian Crisis.
Just today, the South Koreans released GDP numbers that many would find amazing, showing that the economy grew 0.1% in the first quarter [...]

This is another post I originally ran on Naked Capitalism last month. As you know, I have turned more positive about the potential for a cyclical economic recovery. However, I am unchanged regarding much of the sentiment expressed in this post – that any upturn must be considered with suspicion because the underlying fundamentals of [...]

I last posted on Thursday before the Easter Holidays in two posts very much at odds with one another. The overall thrust of the first post was that the financial services industry in the United States was due to gain from some very advantageous circumstances in 2009. Meanwhile, the later re-post pointed out the continued fragility of the U.S. economy and banking system and focused on liquidity and solvency as unresolved issues. I would like to bring these two posts together here because I believe the concept behind the dichotomy is best described as the Fake Recovery.

Initial jobless claims for the U.S. came out today for the week ended March 7th and the number was 654,000, up from an upwardly revised 645,000. This puts the widely quoted 4-week average at 650,000, a business cycle high. All numbers reflect seasonal adjustments.

The real story was in continuing claims.

Rohatyn, a Democrat, talks about the role of government in crisis, infrastructure spending and lessons from New York City’s near economic collapse n the 1970s from his perspective. Royatyn is widely credited with saving New York City from bankruptcy. His tale makes for a good precedent for today’s economic woes.

James Galbraith, a well-known professor at the University of Texas-Austin has joined Paul Krugman in declaring Barack Obama’s nearly $800 billion stimulus plan too small. Below is a video from the Wall Street Journal explaining why the stimulus is not enough and what needs to be done with the banking plan.

Chris Whalen is a well-respected banking sector analyst who often appears on CNBC and Bloomberg. Below he gives his view on Barack Obama’s stimulus package speech and the need for banking sector restructuring. Below that is a video of President Obama’s speech (he does a lot of thank yous before getting to the [...]

Today’s Globe & Mail does an excellent job of presenting the three different potential outcomes for the global economy, one optimistic, one pessimistic and a third somewhere in between. Below are the key snippets of their article reflecting each of the three outcomes. However, I highly recommend reading the full article which is linked below.