Bank Reform is Essential for Capitalism.

Financial News, a Dow Jones Company, 8th March 2010 Economists so seldom agree that any assembled group is likely to have more opinions than members (N economists = N + 1 opinions). It is therefore unusual to find so much agreement as there is today about the need for...

A Slow Recovery for a Happy New Year.

Nikkei Veritas – Market Eye column, 18th February 2010 Economic forecasts are notoriously unreliable; what is perhaps less understood is the way in which they tend to err. The OECD is a highly professional body and their forecasting errors are typical of the...

Debt and the data.

Financial World, 1st January 2010 “Andrew Smithers has strong grounds for believing that high levels of US business debt pose as big a threat as personal indebtedness.” The level of personal debt in the US is widely recognised as a major problem for the...

The Economic and Stock Market Outlook.

Financial News, a Dow Jones Company, 14th December 2009 Central bankers, in particular the Federal Reserve, are those primarily responsible for the current mess in which we find ourselves. Their key error was to claim that asset prices didn’t matter and, to make...

Japan, the need for good luck and good policies.

Nikkei Veritas – Market Eye column, 2nd December 2009 In my last article I took an upbeat view about the election of the new DJP government. I expressed the hope that this would lead to a major change in the economy as well as in politics. For this to happen the...