Why the Neoclassical Story About German Wage “Moderation” Causing the Eurozone Crisis is Wrong
Focusing on German wage “moderation,” as in restriction, leads to a neat, plausible, and wrong tale of what caused the Eurozone crisis.
Read more...Category Archives: Credit markets
Grexit Risk May Be Back Sooner Than You Think
Why Grexit is likely to be back on the table by summer.
Read more...Central Counterparties: The New Locus of Systemic Risk?
Central counterparties, also known as central clearinghouses, were supposed to reduce systemic risk. That story is not playing out according to its script.
Read more...Money and Banking: How the Fed Controlled Interest Rates Before and After the Crisis
How does the Fed control interest rates? A primer.
Read more...Bill Black: Announcing the Bank Whistleblowers’ Group’s Initial Proposals
Bill Black is spearheading an important initiative by bank whistleblowers to combat fraud and other abuses by banks.
Read more...How Central Banks (and Even Keynes) Misled the Public About Banking and Money
How and why central bankers and conservative economists created the bogus “fractional reserve” and “debt intermediation” theories of banking.
Read more...Wolf Richter: Moody’s Explains Why Junk Bonds Will Sink Stocks Further
Why the high risk spreads in the junk bond market bode ill for the stock market.
Read more...Money and Banking – Part 3
How the Fed balance sheet works and why what we, the public, consider to be money is a debt of the Federal Reserve. Part 3 of a series.
Read more...Geithner Ghostwriter Mike Grunwald Tries to Shift Financial Crisis Narrative Away From The Big Short
It’s sad that you have to be something of a detective to decipher what passes for content at most major American news outlets. In the case of Michael Grunwald, however, we have a decent set of indicators about the normally hidden agenda. The Politico writer worked with Tim Geithner on his memoir. In fact, I believe he has said publicly that he didn’t know a lot about finance before meeting Geithner. So when Grunwald decides to leap into anything involving this topic, we can assume the end result is not altogether different than what it would look like if Geithner wrote it with his own byline.
The latest example is a nominal review of The Big Short, which is not really a review. It’s an attempt to steer the narrative of what happened, in the financial crisis and its aftermath, to territory that comforts elites.
Read more...Money and Banking – Part 2
How the Fed balance sheet works and why what we, the public, consider to be money is a debt of the Federal Reserve.
Read more...Bond Investors Get Skittish as Record Wave of Acquisitions Push to Close Financings
Standard & Poors warns of the worst drop in the “net outlook bias” for bond investors since the financial crisis.
Read more...Why Larry Summers is Wrong and Bernie Sanders is Right on Glass Steagall
Larry Summers, acting as a proxy for Team Clinton, attacked Sanders’ reform proposals, particularly the an updated Glass Steagall. Her’s why Summers is wrong.
Read more...2016: Oil Limits and the End of the Debt Supercycle
How tight linkages among phenomena, such as oil and commodity prices, and flagging non-elite wages, are about to cause substantial economic disruption.
Read more...China’s Contradictory Aims, Greater International Role Versus Domestic Economic Control, HIt Breaking Point
China appears to be in denial that it can’t have more open financial markets and maintain the same degree of control over the economy that it once enjoyed.
Read more...Deflation Denialism: No, Chancellor, 0.5% Inflation is Not “Welcome News”
What is deflation? What has caused inflation to fall? And why is there no such thing as ‘good deflation’?
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