... is getting increasingly difficult at the moment. Take Hungary for example. I take it that most economic commentators and analyst know that it is bad in Hungary and together with Ukraine I would submit that these two face the largest risk of sporting the next global macro blowout (assuming that R...

“Absolute Truth” well science maintains there is there is no such thing like that, but from the current global financial crisis it is evident that there is no absolute free market. Truth is always relative, just like freedom. It is important to look for positive points to find a way out ...

Sad Postscript In a sad commentary to the Madoff ripoff, the first suspected suicide took place on Monday night as a fund manager took his life after having reportedly been distraught over the vast sums lost by his hedge fund. Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet, co-founder of money manager Access Inter...

As I recall, the introduction of the Euro was not preceded by insane crashing markets, distrusting and disillusioned citizens, politicians talking out both sides of their asses and a recession with frequent talk about a depression on the horizon. If their goal is to get the three nations of North Am...

[Update: Brad Setser clarifies, in the comment section, his view on Sender's FT piece referenced below] THE last week (or was that year?) has certainly been something of a ride hasn't? In fact, I thought it would be apt to reproduce this picture by the brilliant KAL who normally spices up the Econom...

Many people have rules upon which they lead their lives and conduct their behavior; in fact, one could argue that most people would subscribe to this some way or the other. My readers should immediately be assured that I am not in the process of morphing Alpha.Sources into some kind of quasi philoso...

Sorry for the silence this week but I have not exactly been sitting idle. In this way I have been scribbling on one of those papers I said that I would finish what is more ... I managed to finish the damn thing too. The paper is a working paper I have been working on for a couple of weeks and which ...

[This note also features over at Global Economy Matters and as per usual when I do these things it is quite big. A list of references will follow later]  Brazil is interesting; not only because of its fabulous nature, its rhytmic and musical heritage, and its (alleged) repository of beautiful women...

I am not sure how familiar my readers are with my home country but recent events suggests that what hitherto has been an extraordinary expansion is now decisively coming to an end. The ingredients are well known in the form of a collapsing housing market and a endemic shortage of labour which means ...

I asked Nathan Myhrvold, C.E.O. of Intellectual Ventures and widely considered to be one of the smartest people in technology, if he is brilliant. "If you put yourself in that camp, you might be correct," he teased. "But then, you're also an asshole." The Brilliant Issue profiles...