Jim Leaviss

 



Recent Blog Entries RSS feed
1
Why are TIPS yields negative?
Last week a client asked us why US TIPS (inflation linked government bond) yields have been negative for much of this year (see chart), and we're not sure we gave a very good answer. This weekend, to distract myself from the monotony of doing laps of ... 		16-Aug-2010
2
Bernanke calls for a 4% inflation target
Well sort of. It hasn't got a lot of attention in the bond markets, but this week both Jon Hilsenrath in the WSJ, and subsequently Paul Krugman in the NYT have revisited Ben Bernanke's paper Japanese Monetary Policy: A Case in Self-Induced Paralysis. ... 		13-Aug-2010
3
When Money Dies - Competition
We've just got hold of some copies of the newly reprinted book about the Weimar Republic's hyper-inflation, When Money Diesby Adam Ferguson. In 1923 the German mark was trading at 4,200,000,000,000 to the dollar, and the population was impoverished and ... 		09-Aug-2010
4
Some thoughts from the Barclays Capital Inflation Conference
I went to the excellent Barclays CapitalInflation Conference a couple of weeks ago - although titled "inflation"... 		30-Jun-2010
5
A short video about the Austerity Budget
Yesterday's emergency Budget will lead to a UK fiscal contraction bigger than any we have seen in our lifetimes. In this 8 minute video, I look at the implications for the UK bond markets, inflation, and the economy. Watch the video here In brief, the UK ... 		23-Jun-2010
6
Alistair Darling - a Chancellor who will go down in history (in a good way); and was Margaret Thatcher really a public sector axewoman?
Now that the new UK government is bedding in and getting ready to unleash austerity upon us, I thought I'd quickly look back at the last Labour government and tell you something that you won't want to hear: the last Chancellor Alistair Darling did a very ... 		07-Jun-2010
7
Unemployment likely to rise for many months to come - Central Banks firmly on hold, perhaps for over a year
With sovereign and political issues taking centre stage in markets recently, macroeconomic indicators have taken a back-seat in many market participants’ minds. But how have the advanced economies been recovering, absent these risks? Today I’d ... 		17-May-2010
8
If it's Wednesday, it must be...Spain. Tail wags dog.
Following the downgrades of Greece (to junk) and Portugal (to A-) on Tuesday, S&P looked upon the carnage in sovereign bond markets that ensued and decided that on Wednesday it would be Spain's turn. Spain's sovereign credit rating was cut from AA+ to ... 		29-Apr-2010
9
Could a Fiscal Policy Committee do for UK creditworthiness what the Monetary Policy Committee did to inflation expectations?
The granting of independence to the Bank of England following Labour's victory in the 1997 UK General Election caused a collapse in inflation expectations. Whilst inflation expectations had been drifting down anyway, thanks mainly to globalisation and a ... 		01-Apr-2010
10
Don't worry about Peak Oil - fusion is coming
Never get too gloomy about the prospects for mankind. We're good at stuff. Whilst most of us were wasting our lives in economics lectures and going to Happy Mondays concerts, the geeks were out there saving the future. Of course we're going to run out of ... 		19-Mar-2010