Institutional Investor (February 6)
Legendary bond investor Bill Gross believes the “$12 trillion now held by central banks is a permanent fixture of global finance, acting a bit like methadone. Methadone manages the craving, but does little to end the patient’s addiction.” He also posits that the U.S. would be in recession if it were not for the easing measures of the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan.
Reuters (October 18)
International sanctions are hitting Russia hard. “Though the Kremlin shows no sign of backing down, it remains unclear whether Russia’s struggling economy can support its global aspirations. Moscow’s 2014 invasion of eastern Ukraine sparked a major recession. Economists have been looking in vain for signs of recovery ever since.”
Tags: Economists, Economy, Global aspirations, Kremlin, Moscow, Recession, Recovery, Russia, Sanctions, Struggling, Ukraine
Bloomberg (August 3)
Japan’s new proposal for stimulus “might win a few halfhearted cheers from Japan’s battered consumers, but it’s unlikely to have much of an effect. First, it’s just another in a long series of such moves, none of which have done much to jog the country out of its long, grinding stagnation.” While it “might keep the economy from falling into a recession…it’s unlikely to alter the anemic trends of recent years.”
South China Morning Post (June 27)
“Thanks to Brexit, a new global financial crash is looming. More vulnerable economies risk slipping back into recession and deflation will continue to get the upper hand.”
Tags: Brexit, Deflation, Financial crash, Looming, Recession, Risk, Vulnerable
Financial Times (June 23)
Some say Brazil “suffers from a complex of grandeza or greatness. Lately, though, Brazil has been big in all the wrong ways. The country is facing its biggest recession. It is engulfed by its biggest corruption scandal. It has the world’s most indebted oil company, Petrobras. This week, it witnessed its biggest-ever corporate bankruptcy” when telecoms company Oi filed for protection.
Tags: Bankruptcy, Biggest, Brazil, Complex, Corruption scandal, Greatness, Indebted, Petrobras, Recession
Bloomberg (June 14)
“The shipping industry is struggling through its worst recession in half a century, and that icon of globalization — the mega-container ship — is a major part of the problem. With global growth and trade still sluggish, and the benefits of sailing and docking big boats diminishing with each new generation, ship owners are belatedly realizing that bigger isn’t better.”
Tags: Better, Bigger, Container ships, Diminishing returns, Globalization, Growth, Recession, Shipping industry, Sluggish, Trade
The Economist (May 21)
Before the WWII, available date suggests business “cycles aged like people…. the odds of tipping into recession rose as an expansion got older.” Since then, however, the data is counter-intuitive, indicative of “ageless recoveries.” “Since the 1940s age has not withered them: an expansion in its 40th month is just as vulnerable, statistically, as one in its 80th (each has about a 75% chance of surviving the next year).”
Tags: Ageless recoveries, Business cycles, Counter-intuitive, Data, Expansion, Recession, Vulnerable, WWII
Washington Post (February 17)
“It’s economists vs. the stock market. Economists generally don’t forecast a recession anytime soon,” but the stock market sure seems to be forecasting one. “Who’s right? We’ll know in a few months. Meanwhile, the dispute highlights the incomplete nature of the present recovery, which has lasted a long time but, to millions of Americans, still feels unsatisfactory.”
Tags: Dispute, Economists, Recession, Recovery, Stock market, U.S., Unsatisfactory
Institutional Investor (February 11)
“To be clear, we aren’t suggesting the U.S. economy is booming. When a ship sails in shallow water, the risk of running aground is clearly higher; likewise, a low trajectory of growth increases the vulnerability of an economy to exogenous shocks. So a negative shock is possible, but outright recession is unlikely.”
Tags: Booming, Economy, Exogenous shocks, Growth, Recession, U.S., Unlikely, Vulnerability
New York Times (January 13)
“In his final State of the Union speech, President Obama endeavored on Tuesday to lift Americans above the miasma of a brutally negative presidential campaign to reflect on what the nation has endured and achieved since he took office in the midst of a dire recession.” He often succeeded in providing “inspiring words for Americans who are yearning for more civility from those in political life.”
Tags: Achieved, Civility, Endured, Inspiring, Negativity, Obama, Presidential campaign, Recession, U.S.
