Crash Survival Zone

The green shoots of recovery are being liberally fertilised by Gordon Brown, Barack Obama, China and a bunch of stimulating central bankers. But their growth-promoting seeds are landing on exhausted soil.

The traditional global big spenders - US and UK consumers - have lost the cash machine of equity release that was funded by ever-rising house [...]

Boom times are over, bond manager says

Bill Gross, co-chief investment officer of bond mutual-fund giant Pimco, on Thursday offered investors a sobering market outlook in which he sees lower returns, decreased U.S. growth and the loss of the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency.

In a speech delivered to advisers and investment managers at the [...]

Data shows improvement, but no growth yet

The good news over the past few months is that the U.S. economy doesn’t seem to be getting much sicker. The bad news is that it’s not getting better very quickly.

Day traders can cheer or moan over each piece of data that crosses the wire as better or worse [...]

Mortgage defaults won’t slow until employment improves: MBA economist

A record percentage of U.S. mortgages entered foreclosure in the first quarter, and the jump in foreclosure starts compared with the fourth quarter was the biggest leap ever recorded in the Mortgage Bankers Association’s survey, released on Thursday.

According to the MBA’s quarterly National Delinquency Survey, 1.37% of [...]

China has warned a top member of the US Federal Reserve that it is increasingly disturbed by the Fed’s direct purchase of US Treasury bonds.

Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank, said: “Senior officials of the Chinese government grilled me about whether or not we are going to monetise the actions of our [...]

Global energy demand is expected to soar 44 percent over the next two decades with most of the demand coming from developing countries such as China and Russia, the U.S. government’s top energy forecasting agency said on Wednesday.

The worldwide economic downturn has hit energy consumption, but an expected recovery next year could respark demand and [...]

Instead of working longer as the economy worsens, more Americans are calling it quits before age 66. The ramifications could be profound for the retirees, families, government and social institutions.
Instead of seeing older workers staying on the job longer as the economy has worsened, the Social Security system is reporting a major surge in early [...]

Economist Nouriel Roubini on Wednesday said the end of the global recession is likely to occur at the end of the year rather than the middle, and that U.S. growth will remain below potential afterwards.

“We are not yet at the bottom of the U.S. and the global recession,” said Roubini. “The contraction is still occurring [...]

Saudi Arabia’s oil minister Ali al-Naimi is talking up $150 barrels of oil, because it’s only a matter of time before the price comes back to earth, writes Liam Denning in Heard On The Street.

The price of oil based on the build up of inventories should be much lower. That would slaughter OPEC’s revenue on [...]

The U.S. recession will probably end in the third quarter, a survey of business economists showed, even as rising joblessness indicates the recovery will be weaker than previously estimated.

The world’s largest economy will begin to expand next quarter, according to 74 percent of economists in a National Association for Business Economics survey. Compared with NABE’s [...]