Expenditures continue to rise. More appropriations will likely be needed at this pace.
Is OPEC relevant?
Are OPEC’s recent decisions responsible for the current price of oil? I’m not persuaded that they are, and here’s why.
More on the Yuan and the Chinese Trade Balance
More speculation on the Yuan’s prospects. From Bloomberg:
More ideas on construction employment
Here are some of the thoughts from other analysts about why reported residential construction employment has not been plummeting.
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.
IEA becomes more pessimistic
The International Energy Agency’s latest Medium-Term Oil Market Report is significantly more pessimistic about global surplus oil capacity over the next half-decade.
English for fun and profit
Continuing the travelogue from my recent visit to Tokyo, I was also struck by the romantic way that English gets employed commercially, with free-spirited metaphors that must mean something different to Japanese than they would to Americans. Here are some examples.
Energy use in Japan
I was in Japan a week ago, giving lectures at some of the universities in Tokyo and the Bank of Japan. I couldn’t help but be struck by how differently energy is used in Tokyo compared with southern California.