Category Archives: Economic fundamentals

Satyajit Das: The Real Debt Crisis is in Europe- Part 2 – “Europe’s Long, Long Goodbye”

By Satyajit Das, the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk (published in August/ September 2011)

In the Long Term We’re All Dead

The European Union’s attempts to resolve the continent’s sovereign debt problems do not deal with issues of growth, intra-European financial imbalances and competitiveness. The only “initiative” was the vague plan for a massive public investment program, although no details of how it is to be financed were provided.

The call for greater public investment was accompanied by a familiar but contradictory insistence that all Euro-zone states adhere to agreed fiscal targets. Euro-zone countries except Greece, Ireland and Portugal must bring their budget deficit down to less than 3% of GDP by 2013. The need for many European countries to improve public finances is clear. But how greater belt-tightening and austerity would restore growth is not.

Rob Johnson and Tom Ferguson on the Real Meaning of the S&P Downgrade and the Market Reaction

I feel as if I am too often making excuses for coming across good material on the late side, but between being distracted by the market gyrations of last week and figuring out how to write to Salon readers, I’m even more behind the eight ball than usual. But our initial reader comments confirm our instincts that this material is very relevant.

Readers have responded well in the past to Tom Ferguson’s cut-to-the-chase, curmudgeonly style, but I also wanted to call your attention to Rob Johnson’s observations. Rob, by contrast, is a very measured speaker, so on his scale of discourse, his remarks about Obama are remarkably blunt.

“Freedom Versus Markets”

Yves here. Blogger Sell on News echoes an argument made in ECONNED, namely, that “free markets” are a contradictory and incoherent construct, albeit from a different perspective. He also advocates another view near and dear to our heart, namely getting rid of economists (actually, that is overkill and will never happen. Keynes had it right: “If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid.”)

By Sell on News, a macro equities analyst . Cross posted from MacroBusiness

Probably the most wicked intellectual subterfuge of the last three decades — and goodness knows there have been many — has been the pretence that democracy and markets are two sides of the same coin.

“August 2011: The euro crisis reaches the core”

Yves here. This article gives one of the best high level summaries of the problems besetting the Eurozone I have seen. I’m not as keen about his remedy, which is not to say that it isn’t clever and wouldn’t in theory work. But from everything I can tell, the ECB is simply not prepared to expand its balance sheet anywhere near as much as would be needed.

By Daniel Gros, Director of the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels. Cross posted from VoxEU

Investors are anticipating the unravelling of the 21 July 2011 “solution” and a breakdown of the interbank-market that would throw the economy into an “immediate recession” like the one experienced after the Lehman bankruptcy. This column argues that this will happen without quick and bold action. The EFSF can’t work as designed but if it were registered as a bank – which would give it access to unlimited ECB re-financing – governments could stop the generalised breakdown of confidence while leaving the management of public debt in the hand of the finance ministers.

Are Rating Agencies Now Trying to Mug Rich Municipalities?

A savvy and cynical reader sent me this story from the Boston Globe yesterday, “Rating agency downbeat on Mass. communities.” We wanted to show readers that we are not merely after Standard & Poor’s but all sorts of rating agency incompetence and socially destructive behavior. Key extracts:

Irony Alert: If This is 72 Hours of Central Bankers Trying to Save the World, What Would Abject Capitulation Look Like? (Updated)

Reader Valissa pointed to an article at Bloomberg which looks like an effort at hagiography gone flat. Titled “Central Bankers Worldwide Race to Save Growth in 72 Hours of Policymaking,” it tries to perpetuate the myth of the overlords of the money system as all powerful, concerned with the public good, and competent. But as we know, they are increasingly politicized, hostage to ideology, unduly concerned with the pet wishes of banks, and tend to deny the existence of problems until they are acute.

Look at this impressive list of actions:

Philip Pilkington: European Citizens are Not Being Taxed to Fund the Bailouts

By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer based in Dublin, Ireland

We hear it time and time again: EU taxpayers are paying for the bailouts in the European periphery. The problem with this statement? As popular as it may be in the media right now, it’s not quite true – at least, it’s not true if you take a proper macroeconomic perspective on the crisis rather than looking at it through the crass lens of nationalism.

We Speak to BNN About Europe, Economic Outlook

Wow, am I sour faced in this one!

I had gotten to the studio ahead of time (standard protocol) and was miked up earlier than usual. So I listed to probably 12 minutes of unbelievable cheerleading, which is not the sort of thing I expected on BNN, which usually does not sell the CNBC Kool-Aid. I think I was braced for a fight which never came.

Hope you enjoy it regardless.

Marshall Auerback: A Beer(s) Hall Putsch From the Rentiers?

By Marshall Auerback, a hedge fund manager and portfolio strategist

So the ratings agencies have reared their ugly heads again. David Beers, head of S&P’s government debt rating unit, announced Friday night that S&P has downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time, from AAA to AA+. It’s a sham: S&P’s whole analytical framework reflects ignorance about modern money. If the US government, Treasury, and the Federal Reserve, capitulate to this outrageous act of economic extortion, it will effectively be sanctioning a beer hall putsch by the rentier class.

ECB Considers Massive Purchases of Italian and Spanish Bonds (Update: Eurobazooka Armed)

Even thought the US media has been fixated on the downgrade of Treasuries to AA+ by Standard and Poor’s, the real risk to the markets is continuing decay in Eurozone sovereign debt. The BBC’s Robert Peston said today that the failure of the ECB to buy Italian bonds would be a Lehman moment. As our Ed Harrison stresses, while some countries like Greece have a solvency crisis and need to have their obligations restructures (as in written down), the stress on Spanish and Italian bonds looks like a classic liquidity crisis. And the concern has spread to the core, as French sovereign debt (remember, rated AAA) was trading at a 90 basis point premium to German bunds. As Ed noted:

Market Rout Continues

After a very bad day in the US, Asian markets swooned and European markets fell again, but their declines are less gut wrenching. 2-3% falls in most Euromarkets at the opening (2.5% for the FTSE, 2% for the Dax, and 3.5%.for the Milan’s FTSE-MIB) but for the most part, they have come back somewhat as of this hour. The FTSE is now down 2.2%, the CAC 40 a mere 1.2%, the DAX 2.7%, and the FTSE-MIB has is in positive territory, up 0.25%. This follows plunges of 3.7% for the Nikkei and 4.5% for the Hang Seng indexes.

Market Craters: Dow Falls 512 Points

What we are seeing today is not as bad as the worst days of the crisis, but it ins’t much consolation for investors who had gotten back in the pool on the belief that the system had been patched up reasonably well and the economy was on the mend.

Small Business Owners Using Pawnshops to Make Payroll

One of the reasons the economy continues to be mired in high unemployment is the lack of hiring by small businesses, which have been the engine of job growth in the US for the last decade. In the last expansion, the largest companies shed jobs, and that trend has gotten only worse as a result of the crisis. Not only are giants like Cisco cutting headcounts, but the heretofore-insulated-from-bad-things-by-your-tax-dollars big banks are following suit. And not surprisingly, recent surveys of new businesses show they remain cautious about hiring.

Needless to say, if companies can’t afford to hang on to the staff they have, that certainly isn’t a plus for the economy. The use of pawn shops by small enterprises to make ends meet is likely to be one step before the end of the rope.

“Is Too Much Significance Given to U.S. Credit Rating?”

A useful discussion with Marshall Auerback on Fox News on the debt ceiling deal and the implications of a possible downgrade of US Treasuries. Enjoy!