Month: July 2012

Last week’s bond-stravaganza was very welcome and, for once, a relatively good news story. The effects of the return to the bond markets by Ireland can be seen below. In the figure below, country by country and relative one to the other, you’re looking at changes in indicative yields for 10 year bonds (Ireland actually has an 8 year bond, but let that pass) by European country. Green is bad on the horizontal, but good on the vertical, in terms of spread differential vs other countries (ht Eoin B for the clarification). Not much else to say really, except you should click on the image for a bigger and easier to read table.

Available here.  Minor improvement in growth forecast for this year, offset by minor reduction in growth forecast for next year.

As always, the ‘signed articles’ are of special interest

• Cost Competitiveness and Export Performance of the Irish Economy by Derry O’Brien and John Scally
• Recent Trends in Irish Expenditure and Prices by Colin Bermingham
• Analysis of Recent Monetary Operations & TARGET2 Developments  by Patrick Haran and Samuel Bailey

The IMF has released new documentation of its revised approach to country surveillance, with a view to increasing the global coherence of its analysis

• Pilot External Sector Report here
• PIN here

The NYT profiles PIMCO co-CEO  Mohamed El-Erian here.