Ezra Klein surveyed 18 economists for their charts of the year. Here’s my candidate, courtesy of Spiegel Online: This chart illustrates the end of euro complacency. Investors once acted as though the euro eliminated not just currency risk but sovereign credit risk. All nations–from Greece to Germany–could borrow at the same low rates. No longer. [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Interest Rates’
The Most Important Economic Chart of the Year
Posted in Budget, Economy, Finance, International, tagged Europe, Graphics, Interest Rates on December 21, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Bank Marketing When Interest Rates Are Almost Zero
Posted in Business, Macroeconomics, tagged Banks, Capital One, Interest Rates, Marketing on October 13, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Judging by all the ads I saw on my commute this morning, Capital One has rolled out a new marketing campaign. At least half-a-dozen ads on my Metro car announced that Capital One offers interest rates that are five times higher than offered by their competitors: And what is that 5x interest rate? Just one percent. Such are [...]
Five Things You Should Know About the S&P Downgrade
Posted in Budget, Finance, Politics, tagged Budget, Debt, Deficit, Interest Rates on August 5, 2011 | 11 Comments »
On Friday night, Standard and Poors announced that it was downgrading U.S. long-term sovereign debt from AAA to AA+, the first such downgrade in U.S. history. Here are five things you should know about the downgrade — four important, one trivia. 1. S&P downgraded U.S. debt not only because of the deteriorating fiscal outlook, but [...]
Another Observation on the Yield Curve
Posted in Finance, Microeconomics, tagged Finance, Interest Rates, Macroeconomics, Recession on August 29, 2010 | 1 Comment »
As a follow-up to my recent post about recessions and the yield curve, reader Joan F. points us to a piece by the FT’s James Mackintosh. The money quote: [T]hose keeping faith in recovery also point to the fact that the yield curve has not inverted – 10-year bonds still yield 2 percentage points more [...]
The Yield Spread and the Odds of Recession
Posted in Finance, Macroeconomics, Uncategorized, tagged Finance, Interest Rates, Macroeconomics, Recession on August 26, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Worries about a double-dip recession have spawned much economic commentary … and a humorous country and western song. So how likely is a return to recession? Researchers at the San Francisco Fed took a crack at this question a few weeks ago. Their answer? It depends. When they used a traditional model based on the [...]
The Exploding Deficit Reaches $1.4 Trillion
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, CBO, Deficit, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GSE, Interest Rates, OMB, TARP, Taxes on September 8, 2009 | 8 Comments »
Earlier today, CBO released its latest monthly snapshot on the federal budget. The key things you should know are: CBO estimates that the government ran a deficit of almost $1.4 trillion during the first eleven months of the fiscal year (up from $501 billion at this point last year). CBO reiterated its forecast that the [...]
Inflation, Bank Reserves, and Lending
Posted in Economy, Finance, Macroeconomics, tagged Banks, Federal Reserve, Finance, Interest Rates, Macroeconomics on August 12, 2009 | 6 Comments »
The Business News Network in Canada interviewed me last week about the gigantic amount of excess reserves being held by U.S. banks. Here’s a link to the video of the interview. (We had a small technical glitch at the start, but then got rolling.) Going into the interview, I was focused on the following talking [...]
Federal Deficit Up to $1.3 trillion
Posted in Budget, tagged Budget, CBO, GSE, Interest Rates, TARP, Taxes on August 7, 2009 | 9 Comments »
On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office released its latest snapshot on the federal budget. The headlines: The budget deficit was almost $1.3 trillion during the first ten months of the fiscal year (through July). That’s up from $389 billion at this point last year. Spending has risen 21% over last year, while tax revenues have [...]
Sub-Debt = Senior Debt?
Posted in Economy, Finance, International, tagged Banks, Debt, Finance, Interest Rates, International on August 6, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I was flipping through a report from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) recently (ht Torsten Slok) and came across this fascinating six-pack of charts: The charts show how much banks have had to pay in interest on their senior, subordinated, and guaranteed debt, relative to the interest rates of comparable government bonds. For example, [...]
Treasury: More Borrowing, Less Short-Term
Posted in Budget, Economy, Finance, Macroeconomics, Uncategorized, tagged Budget, Debt, Finance, Interest Rates on August 4, 2009 | 3 Comments »
The Treasury released its quarterly update on its borrowing needs yesterday. The headline is that Treasury expects to borrow $406 billion during July, August, and September. That’s a gigantic figure, but it is down from the roughly $530 billion that Treasury borrowed during those three months last year. When combined with $1.4 trillion in borrowing during [...]
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