Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Interesting Picks

Picture of the day: Celebrating the New Year Carsi (or Iraqi) style.

Chart of the day: Not USDTRY or EURUSD, both of which are far away from parity. This is parity of a different kind.

I don't know how to call it when the Treasury and the Fed are involved, but Econompicdata is right to note that in Excel, it is called a circular error.

The humbling of the Economist, an extension of the main theme of my most recent weekly column.

Zubin Jelveh's the year in Economics research. I would add to his list the Rogoff etal paper on commodity prices and exchange rates.

In the same vein as one of early columns, Simon Johnson argues that inflation in the US would be hard to avoid, irrespective of how fiscal policy plays out.

Felix Salmon responds to a WSJ article on investment lessons from 2008. I agree with Felix's view on corporate bonds, and I'd additionally argue that EM sovereign bonds are equally as risky, not only because of crisis risk, but also because global bond issuance is likely to swell, meaning more and fatter kids trying to eat a potentially smaller pie.

Yves Smith on the poor prospects for the US banking industry.

Financial Times declares "We are all Keynesians now"- I am amazed how much Carsi inspires:) Boston Globes puts it in a slightly different way: Keynes' comeback.

Brad Setser responds to Tyler Cowen's NYT piece, whee he argues that the roots of the current crisis lie at the rescue of LTCM back in 1998.

Ending the year in a funny tune: 2008 Investment Guides, as summarized by the Big Picture.

Rebecca Wilder summarizes the latest Conference Board and University of Michigan consumer surveys.

Dani Rodrik's big questions for 2009.

A glimmer of hope from income growth (from Dave Altig).

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