This is Brad Setser. I am back, and will resume posting soon. But I first wanted to offer my enormous thanks to Mark Dow of Pharo and Rachel Ziemba of RGEMonitor for filling in here when I was away. They set a standard that I will have a hard…

“It has been widely reported today that I have stated that the recession will be over ‘this year’ and that I have ‘improved’ my economic outlook. Despite those reports – however – my views expressed today are no different than the views I have expressed previously . If anything…

This post is by Mark Dow DXY, a dollar index, looks like it has started to break down. At my firm, Pharo, we have been whispering on the trading desk over the last two days that this was looking increasingly likely. The implications are positive for risky assets. Markets…

This is Rachel Ziemba of RGE Monitor where this post also appears. In a recent post, Jeffrey Frankel asks will the U.S. Keep Saving? noting that despite the recent increase in the U.S. savings rate, the demographics of the U.S. (as well as those of Japan and Europe) will…

I have a couple of themes on which I wanted to post, but they will most likely have to wait for later. The market, in the words of the E*Trade commercial, is issuing me a bit of a beat down today, and I have to focus on a little…

This is Mark Dow. Brad is still away. Diversification is the only free lunch in investing. But the way many investment managers sing its praises, one can’t help but wonder if its value is overstated (much the way all portfolio managers are programed to say in interviews that “it’s…

This is Mark Dow. Brad is still away. There has been a lot of response to the assertion I made the other day that base money has not been growing since December, and that the money multiplier is not passing much of anything on to the broader economy or…

This is Mark Dow here. Brad’s still on vacation. Here’s a quick chart  for anyone questioning the conditional convergence growth hypothesis in emerging markets. In English, the hypothesis loosely posits that you can’t commit suicide jumping out of the basement window (ie. those who start from a much lower…

Few things are more confounding to economists and traders as forecasting currencies. However, as I have come to realize, the approach each group takes is very different. Economists are never wrong, only early; traders are often wrong, but never in doubt. Economists look at interest rate differentials, growth differentials,…

I’ll be away for most of the next two weeks — and do not intend to post from the road. But I have lined up two excellent guest bloggers: Rachel Ziemba of RGEMonitor and Mark Dow of Pharo Management, a hedge fund. Rachel Ziemba co-wrote several papers on the…