Whenever I travel, I like to do a full economic assessment of the locale, a post-trip post-mortem. Oftentimes, it is not worth writing up, but Berlin was fascinating enough to jot some thoughts down. Quite a few things were memorable from this trip. (I’ll post some photos later) Berlin is a world class ...

November 20, 2009 By John Mauldin Where the Wild Things Are It Is Not Just Japan The Euro-Yen Cross and the Dollar Carry Trade New York, London, and Switzerland From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us! –Old Scottish Prayer Where ...

I will be incimmunicado today, winging my way back from Berlin for 8 und a heff hours. I wrote this in 2005, but never published it widely. Enjoy: > What sort of crap do you have lurking hidden on your iPod? That’s the question on an older article I stumbled across from my old e&e blog. The Arizona ...

bianco-res > Jim has run Bianco Research out of Chicago since November 1990. He has been producing fixed income commentaries with a circulation of hundreds of portfolio managers and traders. Jim’s commentaries have a special emphasis on: money flow characteristics of primary dealers, mutual funds, ...

Evan Newmark writes a regular column on the WSJ’s Deal Journal. His stock in trade is contrarian takes on the markets and politics. To the extent that he represents an extreme version of the Wall Street world view, he’s a bellwether. Yesterday, he may have run the bell a bit too hard. In a post explaining ...

Squanderville versus Thriftville (Warren Buffet) in Fortune

Back in October, I laughed off the latest China GDP data as utterly fabricated. As it turns out, I was not the only one. China expert Gordon G. Chang (author of The Coming Collapse of China) is more than skeptical — he has the data to question much of China’s growth miracle. Spoiler alert: Its been ...

While the US$ caught a bid this week, albeit modest, in part due to Bernanke’s acknowledgement of it on Monday in terms of its impact on commodity prices and thus inflation, the fed funds futures continue to reduce its belief that he’ll follow words with actions. Since Friday’s close, full odds of a ...

1. Most Blues begin, “Woke up this morning.” 2. “I got a good woman” is a bad way to begin the Blues, ‘less you stick something nasty in the next line, like “I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.” 3. The Blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something ...

Compared to historical norms, Nasdaq market capitalization is significantly above median levels relative to GDP. The Nasdaq’s median percentage of GDP has averaged 61.8%; its now over 100%. As the chart below shows, the big aberrational periods have been due Fed bubble inflation: first in 1998-2000; ...