Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

The Scariest Graphic I Made All Week, or, Still More on Excess Reserves and "Money"

One of the nice things about the Kauffman Foundation’s Blogger Conference is the time to let the mind wander and look at data after having your brain scoured. One of the worst things is realizing too late that you’ve got a Really Ugly Graphic, and most of the people who could help with it are […]

Sources and Uses: Kash Delivers

Two posts on European Banks and their view of what constitutes a “Safe Harbor.” His conclusion isn’t just The Pull Quote of the Year, it’s the Pull Quote That Explains the Year: Putting it all together yields a compelling story: European banks are shifting their cash assets out of European banks and putting much of […]

Q4 2010 Flow of Funds: Household leverage down, wealth effect dead, and equities surge

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 […]

Heavy Flow (not an iPad post)

Was 2009 a great year to be a bank? The headlines all say so. (The 140 U.S. banks that were closed by the FDIC last year may disagree some.) But, as Isabelle Kaminska of Alphaville notes, very little of the gains posted for last year came from anything related to talent: Deutsche Bank reported net […]

US Flow of Funds: wealth recovery fully underway, China?

by Rebecca Wilder(crossposted with Newsneconomics) This week the Federal Reserve reported the Q3 2009 Flow of Funds accounts. The headline indicators show household net worth improving and private debt burden falling. The private sector – households and firms – is dropping leverage. Update: This chart has been modified slightly – the leverage level data (highlighted […]

Lender of Only Resort?

Ken Houghton, having realized there is still a Commercial Paper market, looks at one implication of it. One of the things that gets ignored in all the fussing about government debt is how small it is by comparison to corporate debt. The shortest-term debt, Commercial Paper, can be very interesting. With a maturity that is […]

Flow of Funds Accounts: some are deleveraging, while others are not

by Rebecca The Federal Reserve released its quarterly Flow of Funds Accounts, and the message is crystal clear: the private sector is dropping debt burden, while the public sector is growing it. Quarterly private sector debt growth, households + nonfinancial business + finance, has been slowing or negative since the second half of 2007. In […]