Today’s coordinated central banks action is a very positive step to stabilize markets, as it amounts to the shock to expectations needed to break the crisis dynamics that had intensified in the last 2-3 weeks. However, it is the most prominent proof that European crisis management had failed, which fed speculation of a euro break read more

The euro crisis has been about Italy for some time now. The October 27 announcements had the right main ideas, but lacked detail and were insufficient in magnitude. Because the main ideas had been floated back in the IMF Meetings (Sept. 23-25), markets had recovered somewhat during October, making conceptual announcements insufficient. Given the political read more

If it wasn’t so painful to watch and live through, the European movements towards a hopefully final rescue of the euro could be a modern opera[1]. Last weekend in Washington (annual IMF meetings), we could hear from senior EU and ECB officials about an idea to leverage the EFSF to bring ‘shock and awe’ with read more

Over the last four weeks of market turmoil we have communicated with clients mostly via email and the monthly letter. Here is a brief summary of those communications (click on each for the full communication, though it is only in Spanish, emails from Aug 5th and Aug 9th, letter from Sept. 1st), with only a read more

Fed Chairman Bernanke testifies in Congress today, for the first time in front of a Republican controlled lower house. Despite the news value, this invigorates a debate about the Fed mandate that is relevant in the current world context. The Fed has a dual mandate: price stability and full employment. The European Central Bank (ECB) read more

The current debate about currency wars, the G20 meeting, QE2 (quantitative easing by the US Fed), it all makes for great Op-ed opportunities and commentary. One relevant question we prefer to focus on is that of asset pricing implications (preferably in the medium-term) and how to position our portfolios accordingly. This note is not a read more

We are at an interesting junction in the markets, with this non-trivial rally in front of significant uncertainties around the world: elections in the US next week as well as very relevant announcements expected from the Fed, while global rebalancing is being ‘designed’, the EU discussing major institutional reform and the developing world continues to read more

The still incipient September market recovery appears to respond to data that negates the double-dip view and increases credence to the gradual recovery view. Our approach has been to cautiously position for the latter, within a broader theme of a structural change in favor of EM and other non-G7 countries. In other words, we continue read more

The high volatility of the last few months has generated panic moments in the markets, perceived uncertainty about future scenarios, and sharp inconsistencies in some of the public policy debates. Though there are reasons to marginally re-shuffle the probability distribution among the most likely scenarios, there is no real reason to change the base-case scenario. read more

When we wrote “The euro is naked” on February 11 we were certainly bearish, but did not expect the euro to dictate all markets behavior even at high frequency. Watching the markets these days, it is fairly clear that the FX rate EUR/USD has become the barometer for the success of the euro bailout. We read more