So the idea of a calm 2 weeks in Greece in order to recharge the batteries was shattered by the events of the last few weeks. I have tried to stay off the blackberry and get a little R and R, but each day I get drawn back in by the horror movie on the […]

A few weeks back I wrote a commentary entitled "Today's exercise - If spoo < X, then QE3. Solve for X". Yesterday's commitment by the Fed to keep the funds rate at an "extraordinarily low level" for 2 years is an ease. Is it a quantitative ease? Not in the sense that it is an […]

The CHF rallied over 2 percent before everything else opened which seemed an ominous sign. But now it is up only 0.5 percent. Tyu is DOWN on the session after starting up 9 tics. Spoos are up over 1 percent from the lows at 1262, but are still down just about 1.5 percent from Friday. […]

There are a lot of questions to try to answer this weekend. The first set pertains to the US debt downgrade by S&P and the second set relates to the Italian debt crisis. Both are very serious matters. Let's start with the US debt downgrade - which many thought was possible - but few thought […]

The price action over the last 10 trading days has been nothing short of astonishing. From 22-Jul up until the 30 point cathartic clean out on Tuesday, we had 8 consecutive down days for spoos. Wednesday would have been the 9th, something not seen since 1978. We seemed to have stopped the bloodletting for the […]

The basics of the BROMP (Boehner - Reid - Obama - McConnell - Pelosi) plan are out and spoos seem pretty happy!! Last week the market fell for this foolish idea that a debt default could actually be engineered in DC. Of course it was a scare tactic with no teeth. Coupon payments represent about […]

Bob Barro, a highly distinguished Harvard economist, and more importantly one of my graduate macro professors at the University of Rochester back in the 80s, has always been one of the great skeptics of Keynesian economics - specifically Keynesian counter cyclical fiscal policy prescriptions. As an original architect of modern neo-classical macro-economic theory, he would […]

It appears that a US government shutdown is coming closer to reality - again. Since 1976 there have been 17 - with the 1995/96 shutdown of 21 days the longest in modern history. If on August 2nd there is no budget deal, then we should see number 18. Did financial markets collapse - creating anarchy […]

It was a little over 1 year ago that Le TARP was announced. It soothed beaten European markets for a short time before its core operating facility - the EFSF - was stripped of the bulk of its advertised power to act directly in markets by a German led contingent of hardline moralists. For these […]

Catchy title huh? Of course I don't have the plan. But the rumor mill is swirling with possibilities - Greek haircuts, bank taxes, ECB accepting defaulted bonds, EFSF secondary buying, EFSF loans etc. etc. Expectations are high and we will need to see something fairly spectacular in today's announcement to avoid short term disappointment. Whatever […]