Global Market Commentary, Analysis and Investments
What keeps this world economy turning around?
Not the US. America’s private sector isn’t spinning at all. It’s stuck…dead in the water…out of gas…pumped out…
GDP growth is reported at 1%. But that’s almost all government transfer payments and stimulus deficits. Real growth is negative.
[Read more...]There’s sand in the gears of the world’s manufacturing machine.
No matter where we look this morning — Asia, Europe, the United States — the pace of “making stuff” is looking sluggish.
In a globalized economy, we now have a curious phenomenon: The synchronized release of manufacturing numbers, globally, on the first of the month.
[Read more...]“The country is living in debt,” Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said yesterday when asked about the Grand Bargain the U.S. Congress is voting on today.”It is not living within its means, shifting the weight of responsibility on other countries and in a way acting as a parasite.”
[Read more...]The following interview was first published in The Edge Singapore on May 30, 2011 by Assif Shameen.
Richard Duncan, author of the seminal The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures, an international bestseller that predicted the recent global economic crisis with extraordinary accuracy, commands a lot of respect among Asian policymakers. Armed with a Master’s degree in international finance, the affable American economist is a veteran of the region.
[Read more...]Starting in the 1970s, international credit flows began to destabilize the global economy. One country after another was plunged into crisis as dollar-denominated credit from abroad produced short-term booms followed by longer-lasting busts. Each crisis threatened the solvency of the international financial system; and in each crisis the large international banks that had made the loans were bailed out from their mistakes by rescue programs directed from Washington.
[Read more...]The single most important development affecting the global economy over the past decade has been the creation of $7 trillion worth of paper money by central banks in developing countries. This explosion of money creation drove up the price of stocks, bonds and commodities – and drove down yields – all around the planet. It caused the Fed to lose control over interest rates and over the economy. In short, this new money (along with the US trade deficit which played a role in its creation) caused the global economic bubble that imploded in 2008.
[Read more...]At the G20 Summit, US and European politicians were at odds over the best steps forward. Nonetheless, given a weak global economy, government leaders are usually in a hurry to be seen doing something…
Not unlike vandals in Toronto, who — with little regard for the usefulness of their efforts — were arrested by the hundreds. This truck, for example, would benefit from a little less action on opposing sides.
[Read more...]Billionaire investor George Soros, who earned his fame in the ’90s when he made $1 billion betting against the pound, has just leveled criticism against the entire financial system. Today, at a conference in Vienna, he vividly described the global economy going down, driven by vast government deficits.
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The Peaks and Valleys of a Changing World Economy
“The things that happened could only have happened during a fiesta. Everything became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences. It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta.”
— The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
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