Real News Network highlighted a foreign broadcast on Spain’s “indignados,” and the way they have been providing advice to other anti-neoliberal movements around the world. I’m not sure it has gotten the attention it warrants, but the people that were involved in Occupy Wall Street early on conferred a good deal with seasoned protestors in Spain and Egypt.
Read more...By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
One of the major themes that I have been discussing in Europe for a long period of time is the simple failure of logic in which the European periphery is being instructed to push deflationary policy onto their economies, yet at the same time expected to meet their existing, and growing, debt obligations. In the most extreme case this has led to what you now see in Greece, but I don’t think Portugal or Spain are far behind. This failing policy is leading to the ‘zombification’ of nations, in which they can’t grow out off their debts yet aren’t being allowed to fail on them either. Kept alive by an ever-growing lifeline of foreign aid when the real solution is to let the beast die and re-build from the ashes. I think if we compare Iceland to Ireland we are beginning to get a clear picture of the benefits of writing off the debts and starting anew.
As I have also spoken about over the last month or so, what is happening in the real economies of Europe is being replicated in the banking system.
Read more...If I had Onion-level parody skills, I’d treat the latest story in The Hill on Team Obama’s latest housing headfake masquerading as an initiative by riffing on one of its planned new program. Call it HUMP, Homeowners Upward Mobility Program. In true Ministry of Truth style, mortgage borrowers facing foreclosure would be moved, discreetly, into tent cities that would do Potemkin proud, with names like “Country Club Lane” and “Lake Shore Drive” and painted facades in front of their tents and shanties. Local merchants would praise the new subdivision and the inhabitants would say how nice it was to now be living in a McMansion, even if it was only really a couple of inches deep.
But instead you get my normal shtick.
Read more...By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
Another melee won by the ECB overnight with the LTRO once again pushing sub 3 year sovereign auctions into a “happy place”.
Read more...For those who are fond of depicting Occupy Wall Street as a bunch of hippies with no point of view, counterevidence comes in the letter submitted by the Occupy the SEC subcommittee for a joint subcommittee hearing tomorrow, January 18, of the House Financial Services Committee on the Volcker Rule. The title of the hearing broadcasts that financial professionals are ganging up against the provision: “Examining the Impact of the Volcker Rule on Markets, Businesses, Investors and Job Creation.” The supposed “business” representatives are firm defenders of the financial services uber alles orthodoxy, and there is a noteworthy absence of economists or independent commentators on the broader economic effects. The one non-regulator opponent to the effort to curb the Volcker Rule is Walter Turbeville of Americans for Financial Reform. However, they made the fatal mistake of accepting the banksters’ framing about financial markets liquidity and merely disputed the data submitted.
The letter is well documented and well argued. It goes directly after the financial services industry claim that implementation of a ban on proprietary trading will cause damage by hurting vaunted and mystical “liquidity.” An illustrative extract:
Read more...This came in overnight via the FT. China’s economy expanded 8.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, extending a slowdown that began at the start of 2011 and is expected to continue into 2012. That’s a full percentage lower than Q1 2011. So clearly the Chinese economy has slowed in reaction to […]
Read more...By Satyajit Das, derivatives expert and the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2006 and 2010)
Over the next few months, the Euro-Zone faces a number of challenges including: the implementation of the new arrangements, possible further downgrading of a number of nations, refinancing maturing debt and meeting required economic targets. There will also be complex political and social pressures.
Implementation of the new fiscal compact may not be a fait accompli.
Read more...Yves here. As much as the image of Frau Merkel decked out as a domme is more than my tender sensibilities can take, the metaphor seems to apt for writers like Das to pass it by.
By Satyajit Das, derivatives expert and the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives – Revised Edition (2006 and 2010)
Financially futile, economically erroneous, politically puzzling and socially irresponsible, the December 2011 European summit was a failure. Only the attending leaders and their acolytes believe otherwise. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s post-summit homilies about the “long run”, “running a marathon” and “more Europe” rang hollow.
Read more...Edward Harrison here. Happy New Year to Naked Capitalism readers. You’ve probably seen this from early in the morning: Germany printed a negative GDP growth number for Q4. Here’s what I said earlier today at Credit Writedowns about this news. As I predicted in a message to Credit Writedowns Pro subscribers on Monday, statistics have […]
Read more...By Chris Cook, former compliance and market supervision director of the International Petroleum Exchange
All is not as it appears in the global oil markets, which in my view have become entirely dysfunctional and no longer fit for its purpose. I believe that the market price is about to collapse as it did in 2008 and that this will mark the end of an era in which the market has been run by and on behalf of trading and financial intermediaries.
Read more...Adam Davidson has an article in the Sunday New York Times Magazine, “The Other Reason Europe is Going Broke,” that manages the impressive feat of making you stupider than before you read it. It misrepresents most of the few facts it contains in appealing to American prejudices about our cultural, or in this case, economics superiority, to sell worker bashing.
Davidson uses the spectacle of Europe going into an economic nosedive to claim that one of the big things wrong with Europe is its spoiled workers. The piece is anchored in a glaring, fundamental misrepresentation. It argues that Americans are much better off than Europeans because we have a higher GDP per capita (more on that in due course) and asserts that that is because Europeans are not able to compete in world markets:
Read more...By Thomas Ferguson, Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is the author of many books and articles, including Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-Driven Political Systems. Cross posted from Alternet
The father of the Investment Theory of Politics reveals what pundits miss in the GOP’s failure to lead its own electorate and its evangelical problem.
Read more...By Wolf Richter, San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Cross posted from Testosterone Pit.
Despite the Eurozone debt crisis, the German economy has been on a roll, with unemployment at a 20-year low. Exports surpassed €1 trillion for the first time ever. The Federation of Wholesale and Foreign Trade even issued a card to commemorate the moment. For the year, exports rose 12%. In 2012—based on demand from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe—exports are expected to grow 6% to €1.139 trillion—when GDP is only €2.37 trillion ($3.1 trillion)!
But during the financial crisis, export orders fell off a cliff…
Read more...Although it is remarkably difficult to come up with decent data, from what I can tell, the Japanese bubble was considerably bigger relative to the size of its economy than the US debt binge was. Yet even though the Japanese aftermath has been remarkably protracted, and arguably worsened by a slow and cautious initial response, visitors to Japan find the country wearing its malaise remarkably well.
One of the reasons may be the Japanese preoccupation with employment. Entrepreneurs are revered not for making money but for creating jobs. Japanese companies went to great lengths to keep workers, cutting senior pay to preserve manning. That was done largely for cultural reasons, since companies are seen as being like families.
But was this preoccupation also good economic policy, and might it have played a more direct role in buffering the worse effects of the bubble aftermath?
Read more...I tend to avoid the year end retrospective/forecast blizzard, although some of the more creative compilations can be fun.
However, some 2012 forecasts crossed my screen, and two were such striking outliers that I thought I’d call them to your attention and seeing if readers have come across other Extreme Predictions for the new year (aside from the Mayan end of the world sort).
Read more...