All the Far East markets took a plunge today. Japan lost a whopping 3.5%. It’s largest loss this year. Some of the losses are a reverberation rolling around form last Friday’s close on the Dow. Which has since also pulled Europe’s markets down. But last week’s worries about European defaults and debt, while still very …
Before I start, please let me say that our idiots in Europe are just as frustrating as yours in America. This isn’t name calling its a general lament for us all. The US exhortations to Europe to recapitalize its banks and to consumer more are laughable. Yet that was the message of US Treasury Secretary, …
Well, all the parts are finally in place for the big housing bubble burst, Australia has been waiting for. All the while trying to reassure itself and the world, that it was never going to happen of course. Just like it was never going to happen in the US. But now, like a roller coaster …
I want to suggest that the recovery is over. How’s that for unwise? Nevertheless I think it is. Today it ended. Here is a possible scenario if I am right. I think the recovery ended for two reasons. The first I wrote about in the last post – the consensus among those directing our current …
Recovery failure – The shape of Double Dip Politics Read More »
Here is a second bit of why I’m not with the recovery story. I think the consensus among the policy -makers and central bankers is fracturing. I think something similar is happening between the various market players. Who are roughly: stock market investors, Bond market investors and the big-banks who are speculating on the volatility …
You know I may be getting the hang of this. Yesteraday I wrote about the situation in Hungary and Romania following on from the day before worrying about the Balkans in general. And today, guess what? European stock markets all dive because of ‘fears about Hungary’. In Hungary a spokesperson for Hungary’s Prime Minster ,( …
Everyone tends to see what they are looking for. So those who want a recovery, see signs of growth in the US and see China as still powering ahead. They see the markets having had a salutory ‘correction’, which presages a return to the business of recovery. I see things differently. Now what I look …
Just a quick note. I have mentioned many times before my suspicion that there are many more bad debts lying undeclared at the regional and municipal level. I think this is going to start to leak out faster now in Portugal, Spain and Italy. Italy might even be the biggest – They’ve already declared losses …
Wall Street was gloating – ‘shrugged off the slump’, was the phrase, I think – then it started to go sideways again. And once again it was those pesky Europeans, who just couldn’t stick with the mindless euphoric trance of See no evil, Hear no evil. So what went wrong, that the Euro started to …
China’s GDP is still growing despite the fact that all the markets to which it exports have contracted. Stange no? I think we would do well to better understand China’s growth. Famously China exports to the US. Since ’08 however the US consumer has not been. Consuming that is. At least not at anything like …
