PBoC Governor Zhou Xiaochuan recently called for the creation of an international reserve currency other than the US dollar. The statement evidences a growing sense of confidence among the Chinese that their voice in matters of international finance and monetary policy deserve consideration.

Gordon G. Chang openly questions China’s growth figures for the first three months of this year.
His main reasoning?
In reality, it will take months to determine what really happened during the first three months of this year, but the gross domestic product figure appears much too high when we look at other statistics for the same [...]

An individual who fails to pursue positive NPV projects because of an irrational fear of expenses/negative cash flows in the first few periods.

From Reuters today, the IMF predicts growth next year, but not a great recovery.

Growth is set to re-emerge to around 1.9 percent next year, a pace more sluggish than average recoveries because of lingering strains in the financial sector, it added.
Just three months ago, the IMF had projected global growth of 0.5 percent but two [...]

From this morning’s WSJ:
Freddie’s Acting CFO Found Dead
Investigators from the Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department have been questioning officials of Freddie Mac about possible accounting violations and other matters in recent months, the company disclosed in March. 
I am starting to get worried. It can’t be a good sign when financiers are killing themselves. [...]

Econbrowser on why pay day loans actually make sense, despite the extremely high fees. Turns out people know what they are getting into, and they like it. 
 
Link here. 

It may be a sign of the apocalypse, but Prof. Mankiw is agreeing with Prof. Krugman. In a brilliant article in the NYT, Mankiw illustrates the need and intellectual justification for negative real interest rates.
As the Depression validated Keynes’ inventive thinking, perhaps the seemingly outlandish proposals Mankiw floats will one day be heralded as genius.
A [...]

In today’s WSJ, Justin Lahart makes a compelling argument for group culpability for the financial crisis. I have been advocating a similar view for months. 
The gist: all those firms making risky bets in the bubble were owned, in part, by your pension, your mutual funds, or even your own equity portfolio. You, too, profited from [...]

I couldn’t resist. This photo taken this weekend in Times Square, NYC. Notice the rather hilarious title of the billboard next to BofA’s marquee.

Apparently, the Chinese sovereign wealth fund (China Investment Corp - or CIC) didn’t lose enough money the last time around.