Survey of Professional Forecasters outperforms PMI in forecasting GDP, but not industrial production. Combing works best ~ Bloomberg
IMF builds a complete data set of sovereign restructurings – size of haircut, legal aspects, creditor participation, 1950-2010 – nice ~ IMF (pdf)
Sen Merkely, Oregon (D), boosted by Stiglitz and Zandi propose refinancing law for all. ~ Bloomberg – With Fannie Mae, their balance sheet, HUD, and potential Fed purchases of MBS, the government seemingly owns and is the back stop on the residential real estate market. This is one more incentive for them to levy an inflation tax.
WEO real GDP forecasts systematically overestimated growth forecasts, especially those boosted by IMF programs- Timmerman (2006) ~ Bloomberg
Italian house prices were down 6.7% y/y, but hasn’t been much talk of bad mortgage loans. Don’t think they had much of a boom
Correction: “Italian house prices were down 6.7% y/y” – this should have said a basket of Euro housing prices including Italy were down 6.7%
Greece’s PMI in July was 41.0, unemployment 22.5%, GDP could fall 5.6% this year, 4.6% next year, and y/y growth rate in deposits -20.7%
In 2008, 86% of Chinese said they approved of the country’s direction, twice 2002 readings, vs 23% for U.S. – contrarian signal Putin at 72%
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