UK houses, Occam’s razor and fraud
We may just possibly have an explanation for how British property prices have held up so well though the crisis: fraud. One of the puzzles of the past year is the way in which British house prices have...
View ArticleThe Knightian dog ate my recovery
Remember when business and economic leaders droned on about “100-year storms,” 2008′s get-out-of-jail free card for people who missed the housing bubble? This was the whole idea that there was no way...
View ArticleHousing double-dip threatens banks
Another dip in U.S. housing looks likely, bringing with it difficulties for banks and for their government guarantors. What is perhaps worse: having chucked money at supporting asset markets in order...
View ArticleIrish plight about more than austerity
Ireland and its economic unraveling is not simply a test case of the stimulus versus austerity dispute, it is an illustration of the limits and pitfalls of the very popular strategy of keeping the...
View ArticleSpeculators and China win big on yen move
What does $4 trillion a day in business, never sleeps and sees Japan’s Ministry of Finance as just one more patsy? The foreign exchange market, of course, which is licking its collective lips as Japan...
View ArticleChina runs circles round adversaries
If the global currency war was a baseball game, they would have to invoke the “slaughter rule” and send China home the winner. Motivations and consequences aside, China is so adroit in melding...
View ArticleFed is banking on phony wealth effect
The Federal Reserve is committed to enticing Americans into doing once again what worked out so badly in the last decade: spending the phony paper gains engineered by overly loose monetary policy....
View ArticleQE2 to speed triumph of emerging markets
While “decoupled” is not the same as “immune”, look for growth and investment performance in emerging markets to be better than in the sclerotic developed world. In the short term emerging markets will...
View ArticleBeware China gunning for speculators
James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. There is a pretty good rule of thumb in global financial markets: if you want to know where problems are beyond the reach of...
View ArticleWaiting for Europe’s QE to sail
The good news is that the European Central Bank will probably start a massive additional round of quantitative easing to fight the break-up of the euro zone. The bad news is that they will, as ever,...
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