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Collateral damage. Unintended consequences. Friendly fire. Certainly no one intended to have a global banking meltdown when they let Lehman Bros. go under. Now we’re watching another Greek drama that could have significant unintended consequences – far beyond anything the market has priced...
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Even in August, while nearly all of Europe is on vacation, we find that economies don't get to take vacation. Europe will come back from its holiday and find that nothing has improved and some things have gotten worse. Specifically, Germany looks to be rolling over into recession. In this week's...
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It is a lazy summer day here in Texas, and the market and investment news front is rather quiet as well. But that will change before too long. We should enjoy the relative calm while we can, because Europe will soon be back in full crisis mode, coming off the summer. In today's Outside the Box we'll...
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After I sent out this week's OTB on Germany, I remembered this very intriguingly titled piece by my friend George Friedman, founder of a geopolitical analysis company called Stratfor. The piece was written a few days ago, but when it comes to someone as ahead of the pack as George, who managed to...
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This week I offer a main course, a veritable piece de resistance, for Outside the Box readers, from my friend Rich Yamarone. Rich is Chief Economist for Bloomberg and one really sharp talent. He helps write Bloomberg Brief: Economics , a daily notebook that comes out every business morning with an all...
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We woke up this weekend to a €100 billion "rescue" of Spanish banks, and the initial reaction of the market was relief. But did we not just see this movie, but with Greek subtitles rather than Spanish? Was this another of those "necessary but not sufficient" plot lines that Europe...
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Nobody, in my book, slices and dices data more thoroughly or convincingly than Greg Weldon. In this week's Outside the Box, he first dispels the illusion that either of the two most-expected outcomes of the growing eurozone crisis is really any kind of a solution – neither expelling Greece...
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I debated with myself about what to send as this week's Outside the Box. I have decided on a recent short but important post from my friend David Kotok, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Cumberland Advisors. He calls it "I'm Worried." There are some very thought-provoking ideas...
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All Spain All the Time Structural versus Cyclical Dilemmas The Mother of All Housing Bubbles Spanish Banks en Bancarrota Meanwhile in the Rest of Europe And Two More Leaked Documents The Fat Lady Has Not Sung San Francisco, New York, and Philadelphia Last Monday I was in Paris and was asked to do a spot...
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For your Outside the Box today I treat you to another big, juicy slab of Grant Williams' Things That Make You Go Hmmm… I don't want to be all Grant all the time, but this is just so good I couldn't resist. This week, Grant is digging deep into the history and mystery of the European...
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Unintended Consequences Sufficient Unto the Day What Should Greece Do? And Then There Is Ireland New York, Orlando, Sweden, and Paris Just One Question, Daddy "Illusions commend themselves to us because they save us pain and allow us to enjoy pleasure instead. We must therefore accept it without...
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It's one thing to say that peripheral eurozone countries are better off leaving the euro, but how, exactly? And how severe can we expect the consequences to be, not only for those nations but also for the entire eurozone – and for the rest of us, worldwide? To minimize fallout from the event...
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I have been reading and talking with Simon Hunt for a long time. He is a very thoughtful Brit who spends a lot of time in China and thinks about copper and commodities and cycles. He has enough seasoning to have seen a few cycles himself. This piece summarizes rather well the view that he has expressed...
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What do the “Big Fitz,” the largest ship ever to sail the Great Lakes, and the Eurozone have in common? Hint: the former sank without a trace. Or, as Grant Williams so eloquently puts it, in his Things That Make You Go Hmmm… for Nov. 13 (this week’s Outside the Box), “One...
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Where Can I Find €3 Trillion? When Leverage Comes Back to Haunt You The German Dilemma So How Do We Solve the Eurozone Problem? Where Is the ECB Printing Press? DC, Cleveland, and New York Europe remains the focus of markets, and rightly so. But the picture is not as clear as one would like. Different...