As a general rule, don’t listen to bank economists. read more…

We find our local market watchers’ sudden change of sentiment from a bearish Rand bias to a bullish Rand bias for 2010 a bit disconcerting, yet find comfort in the fact that our forecasters are still only moderately bullish, with no mention of a sub-6 USDZAR, not to mention a sub-5 USDZAR in 2010. read more…

South Africa included as a top EM pick in 2010 along with Brazil, Russia and China. read more…

While Human Action is no real fan of Krugman’s work, particularly as he encouraged inflating the US housing bubble in 2002, and as Marc Faber will tell you at the peak of the Nasdaq bubble Krugman told him it would never decline, sometimes he does say sensible things. read more…

The New York Times yesterday caught on that the US government has cornered itself in a big way in terms of its debt servicing capacity and ability to stimulate economic growth if needs be. the read more…

In a boom everyone’s clever. Everyone talks about how well their stock portfolios are doing and how they’re just making a killing flipping property, or how much money their private equity team is making or how good their return on investment has been. In these times people often talk at dinner parties about the virtues of taking big risks, leveraging yourself up to the hilt, speculating on this stock or that stock, and just generally getting on the party bus before it leaves town.

These parties always end… read more…