October 31, 2008

Russia: The Once and Future Crisis

Good Robert Skidelsky piece in today's Financial Times exploring the rapid changes in Russia's fortunes and outlook: The official view is that Russia is an outstandingly successful economy temporarily derailed by a financial shock of foreign origin. Its annual economic...

Links: Improbable Events, Decoupling, Takeovers, Pricing, etc.

Some quick links to some items of interest: Tough economic times are ahead, and they’re priced in (NTRS) The coming deflation scare (Morgan Stanley) States face two years of falling tax revenues (Bloomberg) Distance isn’t quite dead: Recent trends in...

Gedankenexperiment: How Could This be Worse Than the Depression?

Provocative piece up earlier this week over on the (excellent) FT economists’ forum. Authored by Anders Aslund of the Peterson Institute, the piece takes people to task for stubbornly insisting that the current crisis could not end up being worse...

Dow Goes Gunning for Top Weekly Spot

If the markets closed right now -- with the Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq up 12.2%, 11.6% and 11.9% for the week –- the Dow would have nailed down the #7 spot all-time for weekly gains. And the higher spots?...

NBER Recession Watch Contest

When the National Bureau of Economic Research gets around the giving a start date to the current recession, what do you think that start date will be? You need to come up with a month and year. I’ll try to...