In 2011, the S&P 500 began the year with remarkable fanfare. The benchmark raked in 2.4% in January alone. And yet, in 2012, the S&P 500 has been even more impressive, snagging an... read more »

Before starting on the subject of debt I wanted to make a quick reference to something sent to me by Charles Horner, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.  I am glad to say that the... read more »

  LIBOR (London Inter-Bank Offered Rate) is the interest rate that fellow European banks will charge other banks. Put another way, it is the rate at which a financial institution... read more »

Europe’s underlying problem is not budget deficits or even unsustainable debt.  These are mainly symptoms.  The real problem with Europe is the huge divergence in costs between the core and the... read more »

The world stock markets started 2012 with a bang. Seasonally this is what the first day of the New Year usually brings.  I am more interested to see what today brings.  Today will mark the end of... read more »

Two weeks ago on Wednesday night, after the Chinese markets closed, the People’s Bank of China announced that it had cut the minimum reserve requirement by 50 basis points to 21% for the large... read more »

For years I have been arguing that the Achilles heel of the Chinese growth model is the unsustainable rise in debt that comes as a necessary consequence of capital misallocation fueled by bank... read more »

In 2004, South Korea and Australia began exporting more to China than they did to the United States. By year-end 2008, Japan and Brazil exported more to China than to the U.S. Not... read more »

In China economists are watching the spectacle in Europe, China’s largest export market, with rising dread.  Might European deterioration affect Chinese growth?  October and November tend to be... read more »

The SPDR S&P China Fund (GXC) fell -37% from an April high to an October low. That was nearly twice the top-to-bottom devastation for the S&P 500 SPDR Trust (SPY). What’s more, the dramatic... read more »