Soon Returning to the Land of the Living ...

Exams are almost over and thus I will be winding up work again here at Alpha.Sources. One immediate question is of course where the h'll to start? Clearly, the situation has went from bad to worse and 2009 looks set to become the economic year to forget.

The first thing I will look at is Japan where the central bank is only symbolically out of ZIRP and where, curiously, the economic downturn seems to be just as harsh (if not more severe) than other places even though Japan did not have the same kind of housing bubble as the US and some European countries. For an explanation of why this is the case my most recent post on global imbalances motivates the argument as well as the Economist's latest print edition fields a briefing on the same topic.

Stay tuned.

Claus