That the Federal Reserve would leave interest rates unchanged, was something even elementary school students could have expected. Yet the big question was: when will the central bank begin selling all those US Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities (about $4 trillion) which were purchased in the past few years?... »

No, it did not surprise me that Mario Draghi, President of the European Central Bank (ECB) sounded rather hawkish at the important annual ECB meeting in Sintra (Portugal). His speech could be best interpreted as a clear signal that monetary policy in the Eurozone will soon be less expansionary.

That did not surprise me. Not because of Draghi´s eagerness to tighten monetary policy, but because I can very well imagine that more and more of his colleagues who are part of ECB board are beginning

Every quarter I write a report for UFM Market Trends of Universidad Francisco Marroquín (Guatemala), backed by the John Templeton Foundation, about the likelihood of a recession in the US. This week, we published our latest report on the US economy which included several surprising statistics (you know, the type of statistics you cannot read about anywhere else). Because, at first glance, everything seems to be going just fine: the economy is growing, the Fed is raising interest rates (allegedly because, according to the experts, everything is going remarkably well) and inflation remains subdued. But something is happening below the surface that cannot be directly observed from the headline numbers. Let me give you five charts which clearly show that beneath the surface things are not as