Tag Archives: Macro Perspectives

Share the post "Could the Fed Have Prevented the Financial Crisis?" Janet Yellen’s Congressional testimony today brought up an interesting line of questioning from Ted Cruz who said that the Fed was “passively tightening” policy in 2008 which contributed to the financial crisis.  This is a popular line of reasoning among many economists.  David Beckworth, whose work I admire greatly, posted some nice comments explaining this view.  In essence, by not signaling an offsetting change in the...

Share the post "The Temporal Problem in Market Forecasting" You can’t talk about money and investing without talking about time.  After all, the two are inherently interconnected.  There’s the time value of money, the erosion of value due to inflation, the linkage between money and interest rates, etc.  The problem is, time is a great unknown for all of us.  It is a concept that we apply in a strict sort of theoretical sense to create structure to our lives.  But there is nothing certain...

Share the post "The Euro’s Broken Promises" I really liked this comment by Bloomberg Europe Economist Maxime Sbaihi on the purpose of the Euro: => The point of the euro was to give Greece the interest rates of Germany, and Germany the exchange rate of Greece. pic.twitter.com/bGtW1QNGC7 — Maxime Sbaihi (@MxSba) December 1, 2015 That’s precisely right.  Of course, Germany has basically gotten the better end of the bargain here.  After all, were the peripheral countries not still...

Share the post "Three Things I Think I Think – Illiteracy Edition" Here are some things I think I am thinking about…. 1. Americans are financially illiterate.  Here’s a scary statistic from the Wall Street Journal and S&P: Just 57% of U.S. adults passed this test. This is a test that includes questions like this: Gulp. 2. How about this stock market?  Despite persistent worrying about Greece, China, rate hikes and countless other items the US stock market is just shy of its all-time...