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

A Billion Here, A Billion There…

This is why Andrew Leonard (h/t Yves Smith) gets paid for blogging and I don’t. He tries to do the impossible: make sense out of Michelle Bachmann’s “economics“: 1) The interest can easily be paid for … Bachmann is making the argument here that the U.S. can choose to pay its creditors — the various […]

Which country prints more and runs bigger government deficits: Canada or the US?

Even though Europe is on the forefront of global bond news these days, I’d like to revisit the US Treasury market. Specifically, I’ll look at the Canadian-US bond spreads, which tell an interesting tale of Fed purchases and US deficit fears. First, the Canadian over US government bond spreads for two longer term issues, 10yr […]

Is it true that foreigners finance American debt?

This is the question raised by Brenda Rosser in a couple of posts at Econospeak Is it true? To which Barkley Rosser (no relation to Brenda and in fact living on the opposite side of the world-it really is an odd and small blogosphere sometimes) replies in part as follows: Brenda,The Chinese central bank has […]