pensions

Alarm bells should be ringing with New Jersey increasing the assumed rate of return. This is especially true since they are the most underfunded system in the country. Moreover, letting beneficiaries control their own investments is a…

Many US public sector pension funds are underfunded. This will impact local governments' solvency in the next downturn. It could also threaten the safety and security of the municipal bond market. So the Fed may end up playing a role.

The potential for a state and municipal fiscal and public pension crisis is a defining issue for the next downturn. Underfunding guarantees problems. The question is whether the next downturn crystallizes a crisis.

The rumour making the rounds today is that these two paragraphs in a recent Ambrose Evans-Pritchard piece in the Telegraph are what were the final straw for Syriza that cost Yanis Varoufakis his job. I don’t know whether there is any basis…

The situation in Greece is not about Greece at all. It is about enforcing an economic framework onto all Eurozone countries. And because the policy goal is primarily about enforcing this economic framework everywhere in the eurozone, there…

Tiger 5 - Grexit is inevitable

Remember that the rest of the world has so far accepted the experiment that is Abenomics not only because Japan has been running a current account deficit (thus making it more reasonable for Japan to weaken its currency), but also because…

Over the past couple of years it has gradually become the consensus view that QE has failed because it hasn’t created the economic growth that everyone was hoping for. I find that view overly simplistic and naïve in equal measures. QE - or…

By Edward Hugh According to the Economist’s Buttonwood, “desperate times require desperate measures”. I am sure this is right, times in Spain are certainly getting desperate and many of the measures being implemented in Brussels, far from…

Spain had an estimated 350 billion euros of debt that it needed to roll over in the three years from 2011 according to analysts at Brockhouse Capital. Add in the likely need to fund regional government deficits and rollovers as well as the…