By Rebecca Wilder This ‘Competitiveness’ Thing Is a Scam What is ‘competitiveness’? It’s an important part of the euro area leaders’ negotiated terms in the July 21st Summit announcement by the European Heads of State. The first paragraph, #4, and #11 of the announcement all refer to this issue of ‘competitiveness’: We also reaffirm our […]
Angry Bear contributor Rebecca Wilder has begun writing her own column, The Wilder View, at the internationally prestigious Economonitor (Nouriel Roubini). The Wilder View at Economonitor Europe: Why the One-Size-Fits-All Solution Won’t Work and Linking sovereign risk to corporate credit spreads in Europe …and is interviewed and quoted by Floyd Norris in the New York […]
by Rebecca Wilder I present some basic statistics to highlight the problem in Europe. In short, there exists a deleterious positive feedback loop between overly leveraged banks and their sovereigns in key markets. Exhibit 1: European Banks are overly levered. Spanning 2006 through the latest data point, key European banking systems – France, Germany, and […]
by Rebecca Wilder Recently we saw retail sales figures come out of Spain, Germany, France, and Italy. Across Europe, the seasonally-adjusted pattern of real retail sales is diverging. The chart above illustrates the real seasonally-adjusted and working-day-adjusted (for Europe) level of retail sales across key countries in Europe and the US (for comparison). The raw […]
Yesterday the Conference Board released its measure of consumer confidence, which dropped to 44.5 in August. This brings the Conference Board measure of confidence in line with the Reuters/University of Michigan measure of consumer sentiment. Bloomberg summarizes the Conference Board results. Confidence is important, since consumer spending accounts for the lion’s-share of aggregate spending. Consumer […]
by Rebecca Wilder Lieblings quote of the day by Dean Baker: “The ECB is run by a perverse cult that worships 2.0 percent inflation and is prepared to sacrifice almost all other economic goals to meet this target.” The article goes on to argue that the ECB should increase its inflation target to 3-4% in […]
With the (roughly) 11% decline in US equities year-to-date, talk of a US recession has resurfaced. Through mid August, the high frequency economic indicators point to further weakness, rather than a double dip. In my view, whether or not the US is IN a recession – defined as the coincident variables followed by the NBER […]
Readers here will know more about the US federal government income statement than I. However, given the near ubiquitous deficit hysteria, I wanted to illustrate the truth about the budget deficit. The truth is, that deficit hysteria has been set in motion by A surge in government spending on items like unemployment compensation, food stamps, […]
Today a host of global purchasing managers indices (PMIs) reiterated that the global economy is slowing….quickly. Within 24 hours, China, the US, and the euro area all reported July PMIs falling toward the feared 50 (below which the manufacturing industry is contracting) – 50.7, 50.9, and 50.4, respectively. The UK PMI fell below 50 to […]
By: Daniel Becker In answer to the generic question regarding President Obama’s actions regarding the debt ceiling, I am re-posting this from 2/25/09. In comments of the original I stated that cutting the deficit by 1/2 seemed to “optimistic” for me. *************************** Ok, here are my basic issues with the substance of President Obama’s speech. […]