RJS had been a long-time commenter at my blog, News N Economics, and has joined Angry Bear’s thread of comments. RJS runs his own blog, Global Glass Onion, where he publishes a weekly newsletter encompassing news from around the world for his readership. Collaborating with Dan, we asked RJS to make a similar contribution to […]
Spain vs. Germany vs. UK: production trends showing holes in some growth stories Eurostat reports new orders for January: In January 2011 compared with December 2010, the euro area1 (EA17) industrial new orders index2 rose by 0.1%. In December 20103 the index grew by 2.7%. In the EU271, new orders increased by 0.2% in January […]
Mark Thoma rightly points out the hypocrisy of the deficit hawks’ intent to cut spending while approving military spending in the same sentence. Ryan Avent furthers the dicussion by stating that Washington has used the ‘dire fiscal’ rhetoric to sell short-term cuts that were unwarranted, given that the fiscal problems are structural in nature. Me, […]
Wow, FX space is totally rattled this week: the yen hit 76.25 against the dollar at the end of the day on March 16 and has since rebounded to current levels 80.90 (1:50pm in NY on 3/18). What happened over this time span? Mass speculation on yen appreciation due to earthquake-related repatriation, followed by technical […]
The Federal Reserve released the Q4 2010 Flow of Funds Accounts for the US. On the household balance sheet, net worth (total assets minus total liabilities) was estimated at $56.8 trillion, which is up $2.1 trillion over the quarter. Notably, household net worth has increased $6.4 trillion since the recession’s end (Q2 2009). Moreover, personal […]
Premier Wen Jiabao made stabilizing prices China’s top economic priority for 2011. Amid the surge in world energy costs, this story didn’t make the front page. However, Chinese policymakers did take their time spent out of the limelight to allow the Chinese yuan to appreciate roughly 0.3% against the US dollar. Chinese inflation is elevated […]
Earlier this week I argued that the ECB’s inflation target of just below 2% is too simplistic, especially during periods of supply-side price shocks: energy, food, VAT hikes. Here’s a menu of reactions to the ECB’s announced rate hike (Trichet used the phrase ‘strong vigilance’, which historically is a leading indicator of a rate hike […]
I WAY underestimated the simplicity of ECB policy. I think that the terse monetary policy objective explains quite well the ECB’s announced stance on policy today: The primary objective of the ECB’s monetary policy is to maintain price stability. The ECB aims at inflation rates of below, but close to, 2% over the medium term. […]
The global inflation picture is heating up. On Google, a search of ‘inflation’ spanning the month of February 2011 gets 311,000,000. For one year ago, the same search parameters yielded 1,850,000 hits. Inflation’s on the monetary policy makers’ minds. But why? In the developed world, it’s a food and energy story! Seriously, look at German […]
Today the German Federal Statistics Office reported that the February Consumer Price Index is expected to mark a 2.0% (2.047% by my calculations, which is very close to a rounded 2.1%) annual pace in February 2011. This is simply a ‘flash’ print, and the Statistics Office was very careful to discount the fact that inflation […]