Egypt doesn't have a corner on the crisis market: S&P downgrades Japan's credit rating
If you’ve let the crisis in Egypt take you mind off some of the globe’s other less splashy crises, let me direct your attention to Japan. On January 26 Standard & Poor’s cut its credit rating on Japan to AA-. It was the first cut to Japan’s credit rating by...Here's how the U.S. could lose its AAA credit rating
The good news, according to Moody’s, is that the U.S. government will spend about 7% of its total revenue in 2010 servicing the huge U.S. debt. That will rise to 11% of total revenue in 2013. That’s the good news? Well, sure. Moody’s, one of the three major debt...The U.S.–and the rest of the developed world–is near the point where debt takes a big bite out of growth
So exactly when does a lot of debt for a country such as the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Greece or Italy become too much debt? The threshold is when government debt rises above 90% of national GDP, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff argue in a...Japan's huge budget gamble will push up global interest rates
It’s a desperate gamble but Japan’s Democratic Party government, headed by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, doesn’t have much choice. To break the hold of deflation on the Japanese economy, the country has to spend money—lots of money—it doesn’t have to stimulate an...Household wealth rises and foreclosure rate hits a record–what kind of recovery is this?
Put these two headlines together from Bloomberg today and you’ve got a good snapshot of the U.S. economic “recovery” to date. “U.S. Foreclosures to Reach 3.9 Million in Second Record Year.” “Household Net Worth in U.S. Increases by $2.67 Trillion.” Let’s look at the...The next bubble? Here's a logical and surprising place to look
Everyone is warning about bubbles. These warnings have all been unconvincing to me because they imagine that the next bubble will look like the last one. Until today. Gillian Tett in the November 23 Financial Times has come up with the first description of a bubble...We'd gladly go into debt to save the economy but those bad banks won't let us
U.S. consumers cut back on borrowing by a record $21.6 billion in July. According to the Federal Reserve, consumer credit fell at an annual rate of 10% in the month. That’s about five times faster than the contraction that economists were expecting. That’s great news...Payroll losses down–that's good. But consumer credit falls–that's bad–and so does the Baltic Dry index–that's bad too. The economic picture is clearly mixed
On Friday before the U.S. financial markets opened the Labor Department reported that only a net 247,000 workers lost their jobs in June. That was a big decrease from the drop of 443,000 in June. And way better than the 325,000 decline that economists had been...Jim’s Daily Email Alerts:
Every post from Jubak Picks straight to your mailbox. And they're free!