Artwork: Ilargi for The Automatic Earth A report came out in Britain 10 days ago that deserves more attention than it got. If only because it uses the great term "unburnable carbon", great even before it's defined. It makes me ponder the popular and somewhat crazy claims about shale and fracking leading to US energy independence, the holy grail du jour. It promises much vaunted freedom from outsiders, but what exactly does it consist of? Does it mean the ability
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"The world’s leading economies acknowledged on Friday that 'further actions are required' to put the global economy on track for strong, stable and balanced growth.", writes the FT. The torture never stops. Not that we had expected it to just today. Well, alright then, you can make a point that the biggest news in economics last week was the revelation of the errors in Rogoff and Reinhart's "debt over 90% is deadly" paper. Personally, I think what is still much
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Artwork: Ilargi for The Automatic Earth The Nicole Foss 2013 tour of Australia is well underway, and since I'm not there, it's a bit hard for me to write about it. But we do keep in touch on a daily basis of course, so I know things are going well, with lots of good people, good ideas and good conversations. Though I will never understand, and yes, I know I'm biased, since we've been working together for years, why every
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A report published Thursday by the real estate industry in the Netherlands states that the average home price is now 18% lower than it was at the peak in 2008, while detached homes lost 20%-25% (March 2013 YoY prices fell 6.8%, says Eurostat). A separate, earlier, report estimated that 20% of homes, or over 1 million, are now underwater. Today's report comes hot on the heels of a study issued Wednesday by a government commission, which took a full year
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Artwork: Ilargi for The Automatic Earth Oliver Stone's 1987 film Wall Street was as much an answer to as a parody of a mind change that had pervaded the world since Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher came to power in their respective nations. But in the upper echelons Gordon Gekko's "Greed is Good" was never truly seen as a parody, just as the message of the film was completely lost on the people it was about. And still is. It's
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Seeing Spanish and Italian bond yields drop over the past few days, it's impossible not to wonder what it is the markets, whoever they're comprised of, can't seem to figure out. Like that the Italian cloud will hang over Europe well into summer, Cyprus is falling to scandalous bits, French president Hollande is hanging on to his job for dear life because his friend and Budget minister Jerome Cahuzac was found to be an ordinary big swindler, and in Spain
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