It appears that many of us have had quite a bit of a weekend these past days. Sitting here in Barcelona’s airport I can look back at some very nice dinners and conversations in the company of friends and colleagues as well as the odd stroll down La Rambla. I can also look back at some nice cul...

Actually my good friend Veronica Preotu beats me to it , but since I think it is important I believe an additional shout is in order. It has been a couple of months since I let my subscription lapse on the Economist, for no particularly reason really. I simply did not remember to log on to their sit...

... 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...

[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 sure that most of my readers are aware that Iceland, to a somewhat greater extent than the rest of us, are subject to the forces of nature. Being severed by the mid-Atlantic ridge which is a constructive tectonic plate margin cutting across the Atlantic ocean is consequently not for the faint o...

Most eyes these days are centered, and rightfully so, on the steady deterioration of economic conditions in the US and thus by derivative the USD. The last event to keep our gaze fixed was the trouncing of the Bear Sterns stock, a US securities firm, on the back of the news that the Fed had supplied...