Christine Lagarde to leave ECB before the end of her 8-year term

Thoughts on risk, uncertainty, and economic action.

Washington's Renewed Russian Oil Sanctions Waiver Will Help Their Shared Indian Partner Authored by Andrew Korybko, Both benefit from this since the US wants to avoid India sliding into turmoil amidst the global energy crisis and possibly offsetting its envisaged role as a counterweight of sorts to China while more energy revenue from India preemptively averts Russia’s potentially disproportionate dependence on China. The Treasury Department renewed the US’ Russian oil sanctions waiver on Friday two days after Secretary Scott Bessent said that this wouldn’t happen. It remains unclear what exactly accounts for this flip-flop, but...

Existing US Home Sales Plunged In March, Despite Falling Mortgage Rates Affordability-aiding lower mortgage rates battled a sentiment-sapping surge in geopolitical panic in March, with analysts expecting the latter to outweigh the former with a modest 0.7% MoM decline (after January's plunged - weather? - and February's modest rebound). The analysts under-estimated the fear from war-mongering as existing home sales plunged 3.6% MoM (down bigly from an upwardly revised 2.7% MoM jump in Feb). That is the second biggest drop in existing home sales since Nov 2022... Source: Bloomberg That dragged Existing Home...