Any investment professional who does not know that Spanish banks are having a lot of trouble should be fired immediately. This is NOT news - everyone worth their salt is painfully aware that the entire peripheral European banking system is technically insolvent. Without the life support of the LTRO and SMP, most of southern Europe […]

On April 30th a new actor will likely arrive on the scene in Frankfurt to spice up the long running surreal horror show that is the ECB. His name is Panicos Demetriades, a Greek Cypriot professor from the University of Leicester with close ties to the only communist government in the EMU. Yes, for those […]

There are some important life lessons from the movie “Dumb and Dumber”. First and foremost, when you give people (or countries) easy access to funds that they can never pay back, things usually end badly. In the case of “Dumb and Dumber”, a suitcase full of cash quickly turned into worthless pieces of paper and […]

In the minutes from the January FOMC meeting, the section on "Committee Policy Action", which usually contains most of the meat on the debate, had the following line - "A few members observed that, in their judgment, current and prospective economic conditions — including elevated unemployment and inflation at or below the Committee’s objective — […]

As one watches fires burn in front of the Barcelona Bolsa, rioters encircle buses in central Madrid and angry mobs attack public sector employees on their way to work in Valencia, it becomes difficult to process the true hardship being felt by the Spanish and the rest of the peripheral Europeans. People are scared. They […]

Recently, Bernanke has been blasting the airwaves with “transparent” policy talk. The lectures at George Washington University-http://www.ustream.tv/federalreserve, the interview with Diane Sawyer - http://abcnews.go.com/Business/transcript-diane-sawyer-interviews-federal-reserve-chairmanben/story?id=16012043&page=6 and the series of well timed, high profile, press “leaks” have all been part of an aggressive campaign to justify past Fed action, and lay the groundwork for possible future Fed […]

While writing at Jefferies over the past few years, I have rarely put forward a bullish case for European investments - bonds or stocks. I recall in the summer of 2011, as sentiment soured quickly in Italy and Spain, I argued vehemently that the Europeans would not let a single country default until they had […]

In yesterday's commentary entitled "If I can flip it, then I'll buy it" I made some veiled metaphorical comparison between the US Treasury market of today and the Miami condo market of 2003/07. I want to expand on that metaphor today. In the 2003/07 time period there was a regulatory arbitrage in the mortgage market. […]

A senior Fed official asked me in a meeting not too long ago - "Are you surprised at how effective we have been at lowering long term rates?" My answer was - "Absolutely". We went on to discuss the breakdown of long term nominal rates into a real component, an inflation expectations component and a […]

Maybe it’s because I have taken a few days off to recharge the batteries and tackle some fresh springtime powder in the Alps; but it seems like many folks have failed to notice a seismic shift in markets. Only a handful of days ago, spoos finally pushed through 1400 after 3 difficult years of crisis […]