Recent Blog Posts
-
The $4.5 Billion Dollar Bank Run
Nov 07 201111:20 am EDT -
The Times' Rorshach Geithner Story
Apr 27 20099:26 am EDT -
Sinking Animal Spirits
Apr 27 20098:45 am EDT -
Counter-cyclical Urban Policy
Apr 26 200910:00 am EDT -
Be Your Own Counterfeiter
Apr 26 20099:36 am EDT -
Being Tim Geithner
Apr 25 200912:37 pm EDT -
Notes From a Press Conference Naif
Apr 25 20099:41 am EDT -
What Good is the News?
Apr 25 20098:32 am EDT -
Stressful Enough
Apr 24 20092:29 pm EDT -
Not Regretting the Pound
Apr 24 20091:09 pm EDT
Links
- Felix Salmon

- DealBreaker

- Ryan Avent: The Bellows

- The Epicurean Dealmaker

- Chris Anderson

- Ultimi Barbarorum

- MarketBeat

- Michelle Leder

- John Quiggin

- The Panelist

- Andrew Leonard

- Streetsblog

- Brad Setser

- Michael Mandel

- Financial Crookery

- Kash Mansori

- Dean Baker

- Calculated Risk

- Free Exchange

- Curbed

- Lance Knobel

- Econospeak

- Carbon Tax Center

- Overcoming Bias

- Mark Thoma

- Naked Capitalism

- Alphaville

- Barry Ritholtz

- Alexander Campbell

- The Bayesian Heresy

- Brad DeLong

- DealBook

- Greg Mankiw

- Deal Journal

- FP Passport

- Carl Bialik

- Marginal Revolution

- A Fistful of Euros

- Dan Gross

Why did Mexico's peso fall today?
It's not often that currency moves have an obvious explanation. But every so often, you can apply the laws of supply and demand to FX. For instance, when Citigroup announced that it was buying Mexico's Banamex for $12 billion, the Mexican peso rose because of all the money expected to flow into the country. Today, the flows are the other way around: Mexico's Cemex is buying Rinker, which is mainly based in the US, for $15 billion. So one would expect the peso to fall.
Or, you know, you could just blame the housing market:
April 10 (Bloomberg) -- Mexico's peso fell the most since March 13 on concerns a housing-led slump in the U.S. will curtail dollar flows.
Subprime mortgage defaults may temper U.S. economic expansion, a Bloomberg survey of economists today showed. The U.S. buys about 80 percent of Mexican exports.
Now, I'm not saying that the peso fell because Cemex is buying Rinker. I think all such attempts at causal reasoning are silly, and in any case we know very little about how much of the acquisition price is going to come out of Mexico. But I am saying that if you're going to insist on some kind of reason for the fall in the peso, the Rinker announcement has to be much more compelling than a bunch of old news about the US housing market.
. □Comments
If you are commenting using a Facebook account, your profile information may be displayed with your comment depending on your privacy settings. By leaving the 'Post to Facebook' box selected, your comment will be published to your Facebook profile in addition to the space below.




