Finance Roundtable

Fighting in Nigeria caused oil to break through the "psychologically" important USD 50 level. This actually means - well - not much. Oil would have to rise to something like USD 80 to come near the historical highs in real terms.

My newest Postcard from Old Europe is up over at Angry Bear's place.

The Washington Post has a short primer on what the neutral Fed Funds rate is. You can find the article here (registration needed). The two most important points are reproduced below (italics mine)

The level at which the Federal Reserve's federal funds rate, the overnight rate charged between banks, ...

The Japanese finance minister Sadakazu Tanigaki started verbally shifting Japan back into intervention mode by saying things like:

"We will take decisive action if foreign exchange rates fail to move in such a way [Foreign exchange rates should move in a stable manner and reflect fundamentals of economies]"

In a not ...

Great cartoon!

The November TIC data (aka foreign cash infusion) came in above the $70bn I was looking for in my last post. The final talley was $81bn which gave the US currency a brief respite. Most of the inflow was due to higher purchases of US fixed income assets. Most ...

Many people spent large amounts of time last year worrying about inflation. I can remember reading lots of posts and "serious" analysis in the mainstream media which went on about the dangers of inflation. The hike in oil prices was seen as one of the proverbial horsemen of the apocalypse ...

Overnight news from China showed that economic growth continued at a fast pace in Q4. 9.5% GDP growth is high enough to give most other policy makers a bleeding nose.

The fascinating thing about this number was that it was accompanied by another number which was much ...

Here I am sitting in the 30th floor of an office building in one of Europe's financial centers looking out into the semi-darkness of the morning. As always the screens in front of me provide me with my daily ration of economic news.

A look back at yesterday shows ...

David Tufte turned an email exchange we had a short while ago into a thoughtful post on constraints and lifestyles.