Morning Reading – December 1, 2010
FT Alphaville: Indicator wars
Ignore those slumping Chinese leading indicators at your peril! Or — a dose of bearishness on looking at the OECD’s leading indicators, courtesy of SocGen’s Albert Edwards.
FT Alphaville: S&P targets Portugal
S&P has more bad news for Portugal on Tuesday evening (emphasis ours)…
Macro Man: Eurobutton
Euro… Indeed, the reports in the press overnight about a renewed round of stress test and a step-up in ECB bond buying has hinted at what is to come. But chatter in the market this morning about the ECB pushing the nuclear Eurobutton on two trillion Euros of bond buying seems a bit Dr. Evil-like to us, and TMM cannot imagine Darth Weber would stand by and allow such an horrific policy to be announced (mock shock horror) and we imagine he’s powering up the Bundeathstar ready to take aim at those dusting off the ECB’s printing press. But in seriousness, it does seem as though at least some sort of expanded bond-purchase programme is likely to be announced (and we are sure that Baron Von Trichet will remember the dramatic contagion seen after they did nothing at their May 5th meeting)…
China Financial Markets: The rough politics of European adjustment
If Europe is going to “resolve” the current crisis in an orderly way, it is going to have to move very quickly – not just for the obvious financial reasons, but for much narrower political reasons. I am pretty sure that the evolution of European politics over the next few years will make an orderly solution progressively more difficult.