This is a post I just wrote over at Yves Smith’s site Naked Capitalism in response to a reader request. Marshall Auerback has already written a reply as well and I will post this later today.
A reader at Naked Capitalism asked us to respond to a recent article from the Christian Science Monitor asking Does [...]

Morgan Stanley’s piece on Treasuries Priced for Perfection…for Now! is pretty bearish. The basic gist is that while the ten-year represents fair value today, because inflation expectations have become unanchored, Morgan Stanley expects the yield to rise from 3.3% to 5.5%. That’s a disaster of 1994 proportions. Obviously, given some of my recent comments, this [...]

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 [...]

Former Morgan Stanley economist Andy Xie joins other famed prognosticators like Nouriel Roubini in worrying about an incipient asset bubble. The Rosetta Stone Advisors board member sees the huge increase in money supply created by central banks as fuel to an asset bubble fire. He even goes so far as to call the central banks [...]

Steve Horwitz had an interesting read last week on Friedrich von Hayek, the Nobel Prize winning Austrian School economist. Von Hayek is best known for his 1944 Libertarian call to arms “Road to Serfdom” and is generally considered one of the fathers of the free market ideology.
In Horwitz’s piece, he points out that Hayek was [...]

Morgan Stanley has an interesting piece out this morning called Debtflation. In the past, they have raised alarm bells over what they see as embedded inflation in the loose monetary policy presently being followed by most central banks.  This particular piece focuses not on a general potential for inflation, but the possibility that central banks [...]

Wolfgang Munchau of the Financial Times wrote a very important comment piece in today’s Financial Times. In it he said that central banks are targeting asset prices to avoid the brunt of cyclical downturns. This policy is inducing asset bubbles and creating a more volatile real economy with unpredictable negative consequences.
I want to expand [...]

This is a cross-post from an article I wrote at the finance site New Deal 2.0, a one-stop-shop for current news, sharp analysis and potential solutions of the country’s fiscal crisis. Edward linked to this in this morning’s links, saying “I don’t agree 100% but this is a good overview” – tied to the Austrian business [...]

Earlier today I wrote a post featuring comments by Marc Faber as I like to do from time to time.  In this particular case Dr. Faber was waxing prosaically about an eventual bankruptcy of the U.S. government.  His money quote was:
“Next station is when the U.S. government goes bust.”

I love this guy. Quite frankly, the [...]

Below are two videos from Marc Faber’s recent interview on Asia Confidential.  In it, he takes questions from user emails in regards to the U.S. dollar, economic decline in the U.S. and gold as an investment.
He sees a need for the U.S. to borrow increasing amounts of money going forward – not less. As a [...]