Maybe we can’t count on exorbitant privilege/dark matter/manna from heaven…

The new conventional wisdom is that the return foreigners obtain on U.S. assets is less than the return U.S. residents obtain on foreign assets. And that this means that the U.S. can build up a bigger foreign debt than traditional analyses; I’ve been skeptical [1], [2]. Now, we have more reason to ask how robust is the finding of a durable earnings differential in favor of U.S. investors?

Continue reading

Carnival time

This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is hosted by Political Calculations (of calculate your own recession probability fame). In addition to PC’s usual dazzling display of cool scripts, Ironman had the excellent taste to designate Econbrowser’s Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble as “The Best Post of the Week, Anywhere”. Which maybe gives y’all a chance to start a new thread for discussion of just what’s been driving the housing market.