No, this was not a good housing report.
Category Archives: financial markets
Bernanke on the economic outlook
In testimony before the U.S. Congress yesterday, Fed Chair Ben Bernanke continued his policy of greater openness and transparency for Federal Reserve policy, trying to lay out clearly what the Fed is most worried about.
More on the Yuan and the Chinese Trade Balance
More speculation on the Yuan’s prospects. From Bloomberg:
Import prices surge…
…but mostly due to increasing oil prices.
A Tipping Point for the Dollar?
In a post over a year ago, I observed that the relative stability of the dollar would come to an end as a confluence of events occurred. Those would be the end to rises in the US interest rates, and the continued increases in policy rates abroad, especially in the euro area and the UK, against a backdrop of a massive current account deficit that requires large and continuous infusions of saving from the rest of the world (and indeed consumes most of the world’s excess saving).
Are your inflation expectations well-anchored?
Fed Chair Ben Bernanke’s comments Tuesday about anchors for expected inflation left some analysts unsettled and others mystified. Bernanke was speaking to a group of academic researchers, and I believe his message was intended to provide some insights from practical policy-making to help improve the quality of academic research. So let me offer my interpretation of his message.
The Compleat UberNerd
An UberNerd, Tanta tells us, is
someone who is compelled to understand how things work in grim detail, even if the things in question are tedious in the extreme, like mortgage insurance policies.
A Compleat UberNerd is then
Someone who has read all these posts already and quotes them at tailgate parties.
She kindly provides all the links necessary to become the Compleat UberNerd over at Calculated Risk.
Maybe the Euro Isn’t the Competition
The yield curve dis-inverts, sort of
Long term yields have jumped up, as Jim noted. The spread between the 10 year and 3 month interest rate has moved positive.
CDOs: what’s the big deal?
Here are my two cents on concerns about possible systemic financial problems.