Some older readers might recall that during 2010-2013 politicians and the media manifested great anxiety over the unmanageable level of the deficit and a disastrously high public debt. So how has that movie ended?
Read more...Yves here. While it remains an open question as to whether frenzied efforts to push investors even further out on the risk limb will come to fruition, the fact that so many measures are underway looks like an officially-endorsed rerun of early 2007. If the Fed indeed raises rates in the not-insanely-distant future, getting into subprime and other speculative credits is a quick path to losses. But even if the Fed and other central banks remain super-dovish, risky borrowers can and will go tits up independent of interest rates. Credit risk is not the same as interest rate risk, but the inability to get any return for the latter is producing an extreme underpricing of the former.
Read more...Yves here. This post focuses on ISIS as a symptom of what is wrong with US policy-making. One way of reading it is as an introduction to the role of Saudi Prince Bandar and the sway that the Saudis have had over US policy for decades. This obvious fact is curiously airbushed out of most […]
Read more...The Washington Post has a story that blandly supports the continued strip mining of the American economy. Of course, in Versailles that the nation’s capitol has become, this lobbyist-and-big-ticket-political-donor supporting point of view no doubt seems entirely logical. The guts of the article: Three years ago, Harvard Business School asked thousands of its graduates, many […]
Read more...Krugman is still pushing the discredited loanable funds model, the basis of failed Fed stimulus policies. Does Krugman really not get it or is he defending Bernanke and his loyal successor Yellen?
Read more...Yves here. As we’ve written, austerity in Europe and Chinese efforts to rein in construction-related lending have delivered enough of a hit to global growth so as to start denting oil prices, which were holding up in large measure due to tensions in the Middle East. This post suggests that more oil price weakness is in the offing. This is a big negative for the fracking boom, needless to say, and may give environmentalists more time to stymie further development.
Read more...Yves here. The saying is that as California goes, so eventually goes the US. If so, its trends in home prices are sobering, with a rapid liftoff leading to a sudden air pocket. But even worse for the housing industry is the antipathy that young people now have for homeownership.
Read more...Yves here. While the impetus for Steve Keen’s post is the ECB’s latest pretense that it can and is doing something to combat deflation, he provides an excellent and short debunking of two widespread misconceptions about money and banking. The first myth is the money multiplier and the second is that reserves are the basis for bank lending.
Read more...Economists occasionally point out that societies generally move to the right during periods of sustained low growth and economic stress. Yet left-leaning advocates of low or even no growth policies rarely acknowledge the conflict between their antipathy towards growth and the sort of social values they like to see prevail. While some “the end of growth is nigh” types are simply expressing doubt that 20th century rates of increase can be attained in an era of resource scarcity, others see a low-growth future as attractive, even virtuous, with smaller, more autonomous, more cohesive communities.
Read more...Home sales have been declining since last fall and in some cases steeply, with memories of bidding wars early last year triggering wistful sighs. The sales decline continued into the summer, and indications are that they’re dragging into September as well. But the median sale price continued to rise, if at a slower rate, and in many areas has moved out of reach for the median-income household.
Read more...The IEA dropped a little bombshell yesterday by ‘fessing up that the economic prospects for Europe and China are so crappy that the outlook for oil prices is less than robust, even with the US bristling to go after its new favorite Middle Eastern nemesis, ISIS.
Read more...High unemployment and low wage growth are solvable problems. But powerful and well placed people believe it is in their interest to keep them unsolved
Read more...Yves here. The way that England’s leaders, as well as pundits and investors generally, failed to recognize that Scotland really could vote for secession, is even more significant than it seems, and as Ilargi tells us below, it’s plenty significant. As NC readers have noted, the fact that Scots have swung in favor of secession is certain to embolden other separatists. But at least as important is why events have reached this juncture.
Read more...The IMF’s two loans to Ukraine this year were clearly in violation of IMF rules. They demonstrate the degree to which the IMF is an arm of U.S. Cold War politics.
Read more...The ECB took a few surprise measures on Thursday mainly as a signal that central banks are willing to Do Something, even when sort of somethings they can do are at best unproductive. But the weak tea of lowering the benchmark rate by 10 basis points to 0.05% and announced it would be implementing a watered-down version of QE, in which it will start buying asset backed securities and covered bonds nevertheless pleased investors initially. bu the enthusiasm proved to be short lived; in the US, the modest stock market lift in the morning had gone into reverse by the close of trading. The announcement did produce one tangible positive outcome for the flagging European economy, which was to lower the value of the euro.
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