Yearly Archives: 2012
Richard Alford: Monetary Policy, Household Balance Sheets, and Recoveries from Financial Crises
By Richard Alford, a former New York Fed economist. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side.
Five years after the financial crisis and halfway to a lost decade, economists, policymakers and the public are looking for answers that will restore economic health and vibrancy. Their concern has increased recently with the approaching “fiscal cliff” and the possibility of a double-dip recession. To find remedies, they’ve examined past financial crises that were followed by protracted economic downturns. In the US, the precedent studied and cited most frequently has been the Great Depression of the 1930s, including the double dip of 1938. Unfortunately, economists have produced a variety of inconsistent explanations for both the initial contraction and the prolonged period without a self-sustained recovery.
Read more...Election 2012: One Out of Every Ten Political Ad Spending Dollars Goes to Attacking Wall Street
More than one out of every ten dollars spent this election cycle from mid-April to mid-September has gone to attacking the financial sector.
Read more...Lynn Parramore: Islam Has Been Part of American History Since Its Founding
By Lynn Parramore, a contributing editor at Alternet. Cross posted from Alternet
Recently, just as turmoil in the Middle East erupted, New York straphangers were treated to hateful anti-Muslim billboards, courtesy of Pamela Geller, leader of “Stop Islamization of America.” It would undoubtedly shock Geller and her Islamophobic buddies to know that Muslims have been in America for so long they could almost have formed a welcoming committee to the Daughters of the Revolution
Read more...Links 10/9/12
Mirabile Dictu! The Media Notices the Sucking Sound of Growth (What Little There Was) Leaving the Economy and Underplays IMF Malpractice
Starting late last week, there’s been a marked shift in the mix of headlines in the major media outlets. While it may simply be post fall equinox moodiness or a confluence of downer reports leading to a rare moment of sobriety, suddenly the big venues are concerned about the economic outlook.
Read more...Even Schneiderman’s Staff Shows Doubts by Voting with Their Feet
Last week, we saw a host of commentators rush to defend the mini October surprise of a sign of life from the heretofore moribund Mortgage Task Force, in the form of a filing by Eric Schneiderman against JP Morgan for fraud charges under New York’s Martin Act, even though we and others took a dim view of the suit. And even though a bit more information has come out, it doesn’t change our view that this and parallel cases (which the Mortgage Task Force has said it will launch) will be settled quietly, well after the election, perhaps even after Schneiderman’s current term expires, for comparatively little.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Punishment of the Spanish Political Class by the People
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has a singular problem: 84% of all voters have “little” or “no” confidence in him. The fate of Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba, leader of the opposition Socialist party, is even worse: 90% of all voters distrust him! Those are the two top political figures of the two major political parties, and the utterly frustrated and disillusioned Spaniards are defenestrating them both.
Read more...Charter Schools Fail the Math Test in Battleground Chicago
Last year, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof highlighted a fundamental inconsistency in the increasingly heated discussion about public education in America. In other walks of life, no one would challenge the notion that you get what you pay for. Kristof pointed out that it only made sense that if you wanted better educational outcomes in the US, you need to pay teachers more. But the public wants a pony: higher quality education while demonizing teachers and cutting their pay.
Read more...Links 10/8/12
Philip Pilkington: Debt and the Decay of the Myth of Liberal Individualism
Philip Pilkington is an Irish writer and journalist living in London. You can follow him on Twitter @pilkingtonphil
Whose owl-eyes in the scraggly wood
Scared mothers to miscarry,
Drove the dogs to cringe and whine
And turned the farmboy’s temper wolfish,
The housewife’s, desultory.
– Sylvia Plath, ‘The Death of Myth-Making’
Read more...Gar Alperovitz: Systemic Crisis, Politics as Usual
Gar Alperovitz is the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and is a former Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge University; Harvard’s Institute of Politics; the Institute for Policy Studies; and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution.
Gar Alperovitz presents at a Seattle Town Hall on Oct 3, 2012 immediately after a public screening of the presidential debate between Romney and Obama. The video is a little over an hour long; so listen to it with your Columbus day morning coffee (and don’t even think of listening to “Morning Edition”!)
For the bumper sticker:
Read more...“A systemic crisis is one that doesn’t get solved by politics as usual.”
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard: Protests, Riots, Rightists Rage in Europe – But to No Ill Effect
Lambert here: Logically, at least to binary thinkers, “to no ill effect” is the same as “to good effect.” But I’m not at all sure that’s what Kirkegaard means. And does anybody else look askance seemingly unmotivated footnotes? Or am I too foily?
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Political pressures are rising again in Europe. This column argues that reactions in parliaments, central banks and on the street are well within the bounds of predictable reactions to hard times. These developments change nothing of significance in the calculus concerning the eventual success of the Eurozone crisis response.
Read more...Links 10/7/12
“What if the Global Financial Crisis is Permanent?”
Yves here. I’m featuring a MacroBusiness post, “What If the GFC is Permanent?” despite its being a bit meandering, because it asks some Big Questions, and therefore will give readers something to chew over.
Read more...