Bailout and Financial Crisis News

German exports completely missed expectations on Wednesday, arguing against the case for German export-led growth. Analysts are having a hard time explaining what happened: Spiegel: German exports unexpectedly fell by 6.3 percent in January from the previous month, according to data released on Wednesday that run counter to economists’ forecasts of an export-led recovery. Simon Junker, an economist at [...]

Fitch Ratings slapped a negative outlook on Vietnam’s credit rating today, though maintained the nation’s sovereign BB- score. A negative outlook means that there is risk of a future downgrade for this MAVINS nations. Fitch is most concerned with Vietnam’s depreciating currency, the dong, and the risk of rapid inflation. Business Week: “The ongoing divergence between the [...]

Note: This is not Mortgage Equity Withdrawal (MEW) data from the Fed. The last MEW data from Fed economist Dr. Kennedy was for Q4 2008. My thanks to Jim Kennedy and the other Fed contributors for the previous MEW updates. For those interested in the last Kennedy data, here is a post, and the spreadsheet [...]

Prime Minister Gordon Brown stands accused this morning of using the UK’s difficult economic position as a tool to maintain his grip on the country’s premiership in the run-up to the projected May 6 election. From Bloomberg: “A weak economy might perversely be good for Labour,” Jonathan Loynes, an economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London, said [...]

By Alexander Hotz The financial crisis has given new legs to the idea of taxing financial transactions. The European Parliament voted today to develop a new “transaction tax plan” that would “ensure that the financial industry pays for the damage caused by the financial crisis,” according to this statement. Paul Krugman, another backer of the idea, argued last [...]

Some eclectic items worth spending precious time with this afternoon: • 10 Years After: A Look Back at the Dotcom Boom and Bust (Wired) • When Bubble Burst: Companies Won, Investors Lost (WSJ) • Martin Wolf: The eurozone crisis is now a nightmare for Germany (FT) • Unemployment Rates, by State: Most Regions Added Jobs in January  (Real Time [...]

For some time now, Federal Reserve officials have been hesitant to put a precise time frame on when they will begin to tighten policy, except to note the action lies well into the future. But on Monday, one of their chief lieutenants, the man charged with implementing Fed policy, offered a pretty clear take on the [...]

Staff bloggers at The Economist have been speculating on the decline of the American economic superpower and sound like they might enjoy welcoming America to the club of fallen empires: Underlying all this is the question: Who cares? If America loses its position as the world’s largest and most powerful economy does it really [...]

A couple of articles tonight that fit together with my earlier post: Housing: A Tale of Boom and Bust and a Puzzle The puzzle is when the banks will start moving ahead with distressed sales (foreclosures and short sales). First David Streitfeld at the NY Times writes about the Treasury’s HAFA program: Short-Sale Program to Pay [...]

When a President has the opportunity to appoint several Supreme Court justices it’s an opportunity to have a far-reaching, lasting impact on the entire nation, beyond the President’s term. But you don’t hear much about packing the Fed. Expect to hear a lot more about this, with Donald Kohn having announced his departure. Bob Eisenbeis of Cumberland Advisors [...]

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