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Greek GDP And Credit Expansion - No Money, No Honey
Credit expansion, i.e. easy and cheap access to bank loans, is an essential ingredient of economic growth. But as with all good things, too much of it can lead to trouble.This was certainly the case...
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Driving Ms. Hellas
Another alternative data set which better follows Greek economic conditions than headline GDP figures.First-time vehicle registrations are up in 2017 for the fourth year in a row, now higher than 2011...
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Greece: Creditless Expansion
The Greek economy is growing once again, and this time it is doing so without the benefit of credit expansion to drive consumption and investment. For us schooled in chemical engineering, it is like...
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Leverage In Haste, Collapse At Leisure
"Sin in haste, repent at leisure" goes the well known sobriquet. In the case of Greek businesses and households, they leveraged themselves so fast that the implosion was all but inevitable,...
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Yadda, Yadda, Yadda And A Bottle Of Ouzo
Greece is highly indebted, bad loans swamp banks, the economy is in tatters... yadda, yadda, yadda. Highly conventional wisdom, the one you get from the popular (and even specialist) media, is always...
View ArticleGreece, The IMF's Sugar Daddy
Today, a look at the Greece-IMF relationship from the only perspective that really matters: money.When Greece imploded back in 2010 it turned to the IMF for help. The IMF agreed and as of Oct. 2017...
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Greece: Various Data
The situation in Greece continues to improve. Latest data: The 5-year CDS (credit default swap) dropped to 292.9, the lowest point since the crisis began.S&P upgraded Greece one notch to B, with...
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A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum
The World Economic Forum at Davos is in the news these days, as it is every year at this time. The worldâs leaders - political, business and financial - gather to rub shoulders and, very...
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Disruption
Buffett, Bezos and Dimon announced they are going to massively disrupt US healthcare by designing and implementing an in-house system for their combined 1+ million employees on a not-for-profit basis,...
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USA Debt: Is It A Threat?
US federal government debt is now at 106% of GDP, the highest in decades. It got there because it was forced to bail out the financial sector during the 2007-10 Great Meltdown, essentially having the...
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Greek PMI Near Record
Manufacturing in Greece is staging a strong and rapid comeback. The Purchasing Manager's Index for manufacturing is now at the highest level since 2007. Increasing new orders is the biggest...
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USA Margin Debt
Given the stock market plunge of the last few days, the following chart is interesting. It is current to year-end 2017 (latest available), the data comes from FINRA.Given that total market cap at the...
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Yes, Virginia, There IS Volatility
What happened with US stocks? Why did they tank so suddenly after months of steady gains?No, there was no irrational exuberance, no massive leveraging, no pernicious balance sheet shenanigans at...
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Interest Rates And Savings
One single chart: Ten year Treasury yields and the personal saving rate (ie the percentage of income saved).The correlation is interesting.
View ArticleSteel Duties, Seriously?
Imposing import duties on steel and aluminum is akin to protecting the horse buggy business when Ford set up his car production line... completely useless and meaningless.The US economy is long past...
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Greek GDP And PMI
Greek 4Q GDP rose 1.9% YOY, the fastest in 10 years. Similarly, manufacturing PMI rose to the highest level on record in February.
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Trade War Over Steel? Gimme A Break...
So Trump throws up this firecracker about import duties on steel (25%) and aluminum (10%). Itâs a non-issue folks, despite hot air from Brussels about retaliation via Leviâs, Harleys and Jack...
View ArticleChina Has To Grow Up
China has become the worldâs second largest economy based largely on the ability to churn out cheap consumer goods in vast numbers. It could do so because of a) very low wages, b) cheap land and c)...
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