There was a bit of a stir caused by Dutch logistics firm, TNT Express. The company has been expressing caution, if not downright pessimism about its prospects due to economic considerations. Today, it lowered its targets for growth, with the stock taking a beating in so doing. However, it is the manner of that downgrade that should be seriously considered, [...]
Open Sesame is, of course, the phrase used by Ali Baba to open the 40 thieves' cave and plunder their riches in the Arabian Nights tale. It would seem an apt phrase to describe the frenzy surrounding the IPO of Alibaba, the Chinese internet commerce firm that floated shares in the US last week. Certainly early investors in Alibaba reaped [...]
With Brazil in recession and much of the “resource” part of the supply chain nearing that or worrying about it, you can surely bet that there are “unexpected” problems in the Chinese economy. As much as the word “decoupling” is being used once again (though in 2008 it was reversed, with the world supposedly able to decouple from US weakness) [...]
With the yen precipitating levels not seen since the very week Lehman collapsed and finally confirmed just how global the crisis was (and would remain), “markets” in Japan and everywhere have begun to “anticipate” (beg?) even more. The yen briefly touched (devalued) 107 to the US$, a remarkable run that threatens to even further upend the now-very weakened state inside [...]
There is little for me to say about the GDP figures from Europe, released this week to much shock and discomfort, as I am frankly tired of GDP and eagerly await the unhonored end of its continued mainstream “significance.” The largest problem with it is that its correlation with actual economic results has clearly broken down from whatever it had [...]
It may have been something like two years, maybe closer to eighteen months, but it seems just like yesterday that Europe had left its deficient construct in the past. It was a daily ritual back then, exercising due diligence often through nothing more than checking just how negative bond rates would spring. There were German bunds and even indications of [...]
There is a lot that is deficient about the idea of the plucking model, but that speaks more about its mainstream use as a “law” of economic behavior than the elegant and intuitive simplicity behind it. Its primary observation is that a recession is the temporary interruption of the larger trend of economic advancement. What is missing lately in the [...]
Entrenched narratives die extremely hard, with all due respect to John McClane’s [Bruce Willis] aging franchise, and I cannot remember something so cemented as the recovery idea this year. That is really saying something considering that each and every New Year’s Day after the trough of the Great Recession has brought out the same exact sentiment, year after year like [...]
The ECB is widely expected to cut rates again tomorrow, and may include a program to “encourage” securitization of loans to small and medium businesses (SME). For now, the idea is to reduce the “drag” on Europe’s purported recovery, as, once again, the central banking regime turns to debt as the one and only solution. As I noted last week, [...]
It was just over a year ago that the ECB began courting rumors about an ABS addition to its monetary toolkit. With the obvious lack of credit flowing in the real economy flying directly in the face of all monetary convention and expectations, you can understand the desire to dust off the idea. Just over a week before the ECB’s [...]
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