Via Felix Salmon and Marginal Revolution comes word that Yegor Gaidar thinks the Saudis -- not Star Wars -- broke the back of the old Soviet Union in the 1980s.Russia -- as has become very, very clea…

The latest data from the Fed’s custodial accounts (money that the Fed holds for foreign central banks) is out. It indicates that the central banks reduced their holdings of Agencies from $958.6b las…

This week's Economist examines the recent rise in US long-term rates.  The ten-year Treasury bond now yields close to 5%.I tend to think central bank demand for bonds explains a lot of market abnorma…

It seems, as Shuda Senoy notes, that consumer goods are falling as a share of US imports:   "the proportion of consumption in imports has been falling, i.e., the proportion of industrial inputs has b…