Tag Archives: sovereign debt

This boom will be pleasant while it lasts. It might go on for a number of years, in much the same way many people enjoyed the 1920s. Be that as it may, we have failed to heed the warnings made plain by the successive crises of the past 30 years, and this failure was made clear during 2008–09. The most worrisome part is that we are nearing the end of our fiscal and monetary ability to bail out the system. In 2008–09 we were lucky that major countries had the fiscal space available to engage in stimulus and that monetary policy could use quantitative easing effectively. In the future, there are no guarantees that the size of the available policy response will match the magnitude of the shock to the credit system. Words: 2262

What is underpinning current dollar strength is a shift in market focus toward some of the headwinds facing the global economic environment. That’s swinging the risk appetite pendulum back toward safety, which is positive for the dollar. Words: 692

Governments the world over have spent the past year bailing out, backstopping, insuring, and stimulating their financial sectors and economies throwing around trillions of dollars, euros, yen, and pounds like Halloween candy. Officials have assured us there’s little risk to that strategy but I believe that the opposite is true - that if you borrow and spend too much, all you’re going to do is transform a Wall Street debt crisis into a Washington debt crisis. Words: 882