Category Archives: Commodities

Is Nuclear Power Worth the Risk?

One of the interesting features during the Fukushima reactor crisis were the fistfights that broke out in comments between the defenders of nuclear power and the opponents. The boosters argued that the worst case scenario problems were overblown, both in terms of estimation of the odds of occurrence and the likely consequences. The critics contended that nuclear power was not economical ex massive subsidies, that there was no “safe” method of waste disposal, and that nuclear plants were always subject to corners-cutting, both in design and operation, so the ongoing hazards were greater than they appeared.

Reader Crocodile Chuck passed along a story from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, “The Lessons of Fukushima“, by anthropologist Hugh Gusterson. Here is the key section:

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Japanese Stock Market in Free Fall on Nuclear Fears, Nikkei Down Nearly 13%

The stock market decline in Japan thus far today is second worst to the 1987 crash. As a mere mortal with delayed Bloomberg readings, Topix is now down “only” 12.64 versus a recent 13.18% and the Nikkei is off 12.74%, having recovered a smidge from down 14.1%. Good thing I didn’t listen to some recent stock market recommendations that the Japanese stock market would be up 20% in the first six months of this year.

The yen has firmed only modestly, to 81.55, due to Bank of Japan emergency liquidity operations only partially offsetting a rally. Note the BoJ’s operations are being criticized for being inadequate (ahem, do you think even a central bank can stand in front of a freight train of a major reset in economic fundamentals, unless it chooses to intervene in the stock market directly? Given the current and potential economic damage, the Japanese bond and money markets don’t sound too terrible with call money rates in a much wider trading range than normal. 008% to 0.13% versus the BofJ’s target of 0.1%, so the BoJ appears to be addressing what it considers to be its main priority). From Bloomberg:

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The Fed Beats Marie Antoinette With “Let Them Eat iPad2s”

In fairness, I must point out that Marie Antoinette has gotten a bit of a bum rap.

The infamous “let them eat cake” was actually “qu’ils mangent de la brioche” which is “let them eat brioche”. The only French queen who might have said that was Marie Therese, about 100 years before the French Revolution. In addition, Marie Antoinette was concerned with the welfare of the poor, so such a clueless remark seems even more unlikely to have come from her.

However, there is no excuse for this telling example of how out of touch Fed officials are, specifically, New York Dudley of the New York Fed.

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On the Problem Rising Oil Prices Pose for Central Banks

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard of the Telegraph voices his concern that central banks are going to misread the impact of rising oil prices and therefore make the wrong interest rate decision. Bear in mind that Evans-Pritchard called the 2008 oil spike correctly, deeming it to be a bubble, and was also in the minority then in arguing that deflation was a bigger risk to the economy than inflation.

One leg of his argument is that oil price increases slow economic growth. That’s hardly startling; indeed, this concern has been echoed widely in the last few days. For instance, as David Rosenberg notes, courtesy Pragmatic Capitalism:

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Matt Stoller: The Liquidation of Society versus the Global Labor Revival

By Matt Stoller, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. His Twitter feed is http://www.twitter.com/matthewstoller.

Today, the city of Providence, Rhode Island sent out layoff notices to every single teacher in the city. Every single one of them. If you want to understand why this is happening, why wages in the US keep getting cut, this chart tells the story.

That’s the number of strikes since 1947. What you’ll notice is that people in America just don’t strike anymore. Why? Well, their jobs have been shipped off to factory countries, their unions have been broken, and their salaries until recently have been supplemented by credit. It’s part of a giant labor arbitrage game, that the Federal Reserve and elites in both parties are happy to play. Strike, and you’re fired. Don’t strike, and your pay is probably going to be cut. Don’t like it? Sorry, we can open a plant abroad. And we have institutions, like the IMF, to make sure that we get goods from those factory-countries, and get them cheap.

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Bill Fleckenstein and Dylan Ratigan Discuss Commodities and “Individually Smart, Collectively Stupid” Regulators

This is a particularly crisp and straightforward discussion between money manager Bill Fleckenstein and Dylan Ratigan about central bank actions and commodities inflation. Enjoy!

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Guest Post: Cooking up trouble – Soaring food and fuel prices in North Africa and the Middle East

Yves here. I thought this post was useful not only in describing how high food prices posed a particularly difficult policy problem for North African countries, but also in providing important background.

By Ronald Albers and Marga Peeters; cross posted from VoxEU.

World food prices are now even higher than their peak just before the global crisis. During periods of high commodity prices, North African and Middle Eastern governments have a long tradition of subsidising food and fuel products. But this column shows that food price inflation and consequently subsidies were also high during periods when global commodity prices were falling. Now these countries have an opportunity to correct this.

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Bernanke Blames the Global Financial Crisis on China

They must put something in the water at the Fed, certainly the Board of Governors and the New York Fed. Everyone there, or at least pretty much everyone who gets presented to the media, seems to have an advanced form of mental illness, namely, an pronounced inability to admit error. While many in public life suffer from this particular affliction, it appears pervasive at the Fed. Examples abound including an overt ones like an article attempting to bolster the party line that no one, and hence certainly not the central bank, could have seen the housing bubble coming, or subtler ones, like a long paper on the shadow banking system that I did not bother to shred because doing it right would have tried reader patience Among other things, it endeavored to present the shadow banking system as virtuous (a necessary position since the Fed bailed it out) because it was all tied to securtization and hence credit intermediation. That framing conveniently omits the role of credit default swaps and how they multiplied the worst credit risks well beyond real economy exposure levels and concentrated them in highly geared financial firms.

Another example of the “it is never the Fed’s fault” disease reared its ugly head in the context of the G20 meetings.

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Guest Post: The Price of Oil – Where the Outrage?

By Payam Sharifi, an economics Graduate Student at the University of Missouri-Kansas City

Here in the United States, discussions of our troubled times revolve around any of the following: the housing crisis, the federal debt, unemployment, the fiscal health of particular states, and sometimes even income inequality. Overseas, discussions can include these topics, as well as the plight of the Euro. One issue that I personally feel has gotten the short end of the stick is that of commodity prices, and in particular food and oil. There is a special significance to this issue: its ramifications affect nearly every human being in the world. As seen in prices on the NYMEX and other markets, oil and food prices are beginning to soar again, with the price of WTI futures hitting $90/barrel and Brent crude going over $100/barrel. This issue ought to be discussed again with a renewed interest – but the media and much of the populace at large have simply accepted high food and oil prices as an unavoidable fact of life, without any discussion of the causes of these price rises aside from platitudes. For example, a recent AP report quoted an opinion that gasoline was going to hit $4/$5 a gallon in 2011, but did not mention the possible relevance of speculation in the futures market. It seems that everyday observers (as well as even the financial media) find this issue so complex that they shrink from discussing it. I will now give my opinion on these issues, buttressed by what I have learned from a recent interview with commodities trader Daniel Dicker. His new book “Oil’s Endless Bid” is due out in April.

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Why the Krugman “I See No Commodities Speculation” Analysis is Flawed

Paul Krugman correctly anticipated that I would be unable to resist taking issue with him again regarding his view that the recent increase in commodities prices are warranted by the fundamentals.

Note that I am not saying in this post that “commodities prices have increased as a result of speculation.” That takes more granular analysis of conditions in various markets; we’ll be looking at some that look suspect in the coming days and weeks.

I intend to accomplish something much simpler in this post: to dispute the logic of Krugman’s overarching argument. He professes to be empirical, but as we will show, he is looking at dangerously incomplete data, so his conclusions rest on what comes close to a garbage in, garbage out analysis. And that’s been a source of frustration given his considerable reputation and reach.

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Tom Ferguson: Memo to Obama – Anything but Democracy Now for Egypt is Building on Sand

By Tom Ferguson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and a Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow. Cross posted from New Deal 2.0

Food and oil prices are rising as tension in Cairo is soaring — time to get on board with the people’s demands.

Add Barack Obama to the long list of statesmen who couldn’t solve the Riddle of the Sphinx. For a while last week it looked like a miracle was happening: The United States was on the verge of doing right and doing well at the same time. After stumbling initially, the administration openly warned the Egyptian army and government not to slaughter the protesters. It also started lining up behind the Egyptian people’s demands for a swift transition to a new, more democratic regime. Neo-con lions like Robert Kagan and Elliott Abrams bedded down with liberal internationalist lambs in a “Working Group on Egypt” that called for reforms and Mubarak’s exit, while John McCain and other Republicans offered bipartisan cover for Real Change in the world’s oldest civilization.

But by Saturday, February 5, the wheels started coming off.

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Krugman, Commodity Prices, and Speculators

Paul Krugman was gracious enough to acknowledge our past differences on the matter of commodities speculation, which was specifically about oil markets. It was the subject of a long running argument conversation between his blog and mine in spring 2008, which I recapped in ECONNED.

In brief, Krugman contended that the skyrocketing oil prices of early 2008 were the result of fundamental factors (and we pointed out that we were puzzled by his stance, since he, unlike the vast majority of Serious Economists, has been willing to call some past bubbles in their making). As he reiterates on his blog today, if the prices exceed the level dictated by supply and demand in the real economy, a standard microeconomic analysis would expect there to be inventory accumulation, aka hoarding.

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The IMF’s Epic Fail on Egypt

Over the last week, we’ve had the spectacle of the Western media speculating about what is going on in Egypt in the absence of much understanding of the forces at work (this article by Paul Amar is a notable exception).

Needless to say, there has also been a great deal of consternation as to how the West’s supposedly vaunted intelligence apparatus failed to see this one coming. This lapse is as bad as the inability to foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union (it’s arguably worse: a lot of people profited from the Cold War, and they’d have every reason to fan fears and thus look for evidence that would support the idea that the USSR was a formidable threat. By contrast, one would think that conveying word that the domestic situation in Egypt was charged would have led to more intense scrutiny which ought to have served some interests (like various consultants and analysts). That suggests the US was so wedded to Mubarak that anyone who dared say his regime was at risk would get “shoot the messenger” treatment, and thus nary a discouraging word was conveyed).

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