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A post by Marc Chandler, head of Brown Brother Harriman’s Currency Strategy Team. For BBH’s currency views, visit the website here.
The G20 meet this weekend and it has drawn little attention thus far.  South Korea heads up the G20 this year and this meeting of deputy finance ministers and deputy central bankers will be held [...]

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This is how Stephen Roach describes the economy despite the largest monetary and stimulus in global history. Below is a TV interview Roach recently did on CNBC TV-18 as a video in two parts with the linked transcript at the bottom.  Roach says that historical precedent demonstrates recessions precipitated by large private sector debt burdens [...]

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“We shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.” –John Winthrop

Joe Biden is buying none of this America-as-an-empire-in-terminal-decline meme.  The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne caught up with the Vice President on Tuesday to discuss the Obama Administration’s economic recovery plan.  Where he got most heated was in [...]

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This is a post which was originally published at A Fistful of Euros.
The global manufacturing expansion continued to gather momentum in January. Coming in at 56.1, up from 54.6 in December, the JPMorgan Global Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index registered its highest reading for five and a half years. The latest improvement in overall operating performance [...]

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You kind of saw this coming didn’t you. Asians remember the Depression that began there a decade ago all too vividly. Many still see the West to blame because of the draconian economic policy solutions meted out by the IMF, including now-US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner amongst others.
Incongruously, the very same Tim Geithner of [...]

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Remember when the war in Afghanistan began 8 years ago?  I remember reading sarcastic cartoons on a site by David Rees called “Get Your War On.” Here are the first entries:

Certainly something to think about given the announcement by the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner to send another 30,000 troops into Afghanistan.

Glenn Greenwald had this [...]

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Remember the fabled Goldilocks economy that we had during the Great Moderation:
A Goldilocks economy is a not too hot or cold economy, sustaining moderate economic growth and a low inflation allowing for a market friendly monetary policy. The name comes from the children’s story The Three Bears. The first use of this phrase is credited [...]

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My post title is an ode to Yves Smith, who likes to feign surprise when the blindingly obvious finally comes into plain view for all to see. The latest sign that underneath the surface weakness remains at large financial institutions comes courtesy of Standard & Poors. According to the Telegraph’s Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, S&P believes many [...]

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Saturday Night Live’s China-U.S. press conference is pure comedy. It captures the Zeitgeist pretty well. The Mrs. Obama part at the end, though, was way over-the-top  (and in poor taste if you ask me). Take those comments out and you have a pretty funny skit.

One thing, though. It’s more than $1.3 trillion in American paper [...]

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Paul Krugman has noticed that trade has absolutely collapsed with this economic downturn. It is worse than the Great Depression.
Question: is this aiding global re-balancing?
Here are two data points from Europe today which lead to that question.
The BBC reports on Germany:
Germany’s trade surplus fell 43% in August after a drop in exports from Europe’s biggest [...]