The Fed’s announcement of $600 billion of intermediate and long Treasury purchase, informally dubbed QE2, teed off a peppy rally in stocks, and led to further weakening of the dollar. These trends were already well in motion thanks to the central bank’s winks and nods that it was going to embark on another round of […]
Read more...Reader James S. highlighted a useful article at the MIT Technology Review, “Can the U.S. Rare-Earth Industry Rebound?” Our only quibble to this solid piece is its summary, which underplays some critical aspects of the article: The U.S. has plenty of the metals that are critical to many green-energy technologies, but engineering and R&D expertise […]
Read more...Here’s the update, per the New York Times: The Chinese government on Thursday abruptly ended its unannounced export embargo on crucial rare earth minerals to the United States, Europe and Japan, four industry officials said. The embargo, which has raised trade tensions, ended as it had begun — with no official acknowledgment from Beijing, or […]
Read more...Yves here. This post cites a number of recent Western commentaries on China’s currency policies; I suggest, for one stop shopping, you read Martin Wolf comment, “Why America is going to win the global currency battle.” There are several points in the argument below that are curious, to say the least. One is the notion […]
Read more...The comment by Joseph Stiglitz in the Financial Times lambasting the Fed’s expected move to quantitative easing is certain to have no impact on the central bank’s course of action. His article nevertheless is proof that this idea is not as well received as the officialdom would like you to believe. It isn’t merely Stiglitz’s […]
Read more...Bloomberg reported on a rather peculiar announcement from the Chinese officialdom, which comes off as a rather lame rationalization of its ban on rare earths exports. If you are late to this cause celebre, rare earths confusingly really aren’t rare, but they are found only in fairly low concentrations and are nasty to mine. They […]
Read more...A couple of articles in the Wall Street Journal, reporting on a conference at the Boston Fed, indicates that some people at the Fed may recognize that the central bank has boxed itself in more than a tad. The first is on the question of whether the Fed is in a liquidity trap. A lot […]
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and hedge fund manager who writes for New Deal 2.0 Although I have consistently taken the line that QE is totally useless, in effect an accounting trick which does little for real economic activity, I should have at least acknowledged its powers in terms of fomenting casino-like speculation in […]
Read more...This post first appeared on May 9, 2008 The question above may seem foolish. Oil has just passed $124 a barrel despite improvement in the dollar. Commodities prices are moving less in lockstep than before (gold and wheat in particular have backed off significantly from their highs) suggesting that buying is not the result of […]
Read more...Last night, some fresh comments by Obama Administration officials confirmed its cynicism and duplicity in its Ministry of Truth version of health care reform. It’s one thing to suspect Team Obama was playing the public for a fool, quite another to have proof. Today we have more corroboration of Obama Administration double dealing, this on […]
Read more...An ongoing China v. Japan/US row is getting interesting, and probably not in a good way. Readers may recall that we took note of a ban on shipments of rare earths raw materials to Japan, which in many ways was also a shot across the US bow. Even though so-called rare earths are not that […]
Read more...In our escalating currency (really trade) dispute with China, many people argue that China holds the whip hand because it would quit buying US bonds. As we’ve explained repeatedly, that’s the last thing China would do, since stopping buying US debt (or more accurately, US dollars which it then moves into higher yielding assets than […]
Read more...By Kalpa, who blogs at big picture agriculture. Kalpa’s formal education was in medicine, science, and the humanities. Having seen the destruction that industrial agriculture has done to the biosystem of the Midwestern Plains, where she grew up, she writes on the comprehensive picture of economics in agriculture, ag science, ag policy, food security, energy, […]
Read more...The end of the US summer holiday period is upon us, and with it, a return to reality. The markets are again concerned re Eurobanks, as the fears registered in EU periphery country bond spreads are now registering with investors in other markets. Per Bloomberg: The gaps between 10- year German bond yields and those […]
Read more...News is preliminary, no idea yet whether it is a production well or not, but all 13 crew members on the Mariner Energy rig are accounted for. The Journal’s story here (which presumably will be updated); Bloomberg’s here.
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