I am going to fill in a few posts for Yves while she is away on conference. Here’s one that is a thought piece I wrote last week at Credit Writedowns. It is a mental model of the economy I am toying with based on some comments the modern monetary theory folks have made to […]
Read more...It is interesting to see how the popular desire for Occupy Wall Street to issue demands is leading various pundits and experts to boil down and update their views on what really needs to be done to fix the financial and political systems. (Note we are of the minority view that OWS is being shrewd in not acceding to pressure to reduce its desire for broad-based change to soundbites and an easily-to-digest program.
Bill Black give his usual forthright views on this segment on Real News Network. Enjoy!
Read more...Reader Sufferin’ Succotash asked whether Papandreou would turn out to be Pericles or Petain. We now have our answer. His finance minister, Evengelos Venizelos, went to the G20 in Cannes (going directly after being discharged from the hospital, meaning he almost certainly did not inform and therefore intended to betray Papandreou) and issued a statement arguing that the need to get the next cash dole from the bailout program and maintain “international credibility” trumped all other considerations. Papandreou backed down and canceled the referendum.
Even though everyone who is not part of the problem recognizes that an eventual Greek default (or much deeper debt restructuring) is inevitable, it seems the Greek population must be ground into the dust first to discourage any rebellion against the new order of rule by creditors. The wild card is whether the level of civil disobedience rises to the point where the government has to change course. We’ve already read of serious signs of breakdown: widespread failures to collect trash, frequent power interruption, such reduced schedules for public transportation that it becomes difficult for those who still have jobs to get to work.
Although this segment was taped before the Papandreou volte face, this discussion on Democracy Now with Michael Hudson illuminates some of the underlying dynamics behind this showdown.
Read more...Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has managed to put the European crisis game of financial fakery into turmoil. Pretty much no informed commentator expected the latest gimmick-larded rescue package to work; there were simply too many points of failure. And even if this program had miraculously come to fruition, a later train wreck was still inevitable, since Germany was persisting in wanting two contradictory outcomes: running trade surpluses in Europe, and not lending more to its trade parters.
But no one anticipated that a long suffering debtor would revolt, which is what Papandreou’s announcement of a referendum on the punitive bailout amounts to.
Read more...Yves here. Note the comment at the end, that Sarkozy’s sales pitch to China on the levered up EFSF did not go so well. If the Chinese don’t relent, this greatly reduces of this scheme working, even in the short term. And further note that the flagging European growth is the result of the austerity hairshirt being imposed on highly indebted economies. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has a pointed article on the consequences of the beggar-thy-neighbor German stance.
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
Angela Merkel has been warning for quite some time that Europe’s economic woes will take up to a decade to fix and that it is time for Europe to rethink its economic strategy after years of living “beyond its means”. It seems fairly obvious from those statements that the rest of the world is going to have to get use to Europe moving into a slow growth phase while it attempts to adjust away from what it considers to be unsustainable debt.
In an attempt support the transition while keeping Europe together the European leaders have put together 3 part package to save Greece, re-capitalise the banks and provide a stability mechanism for countries that run into trouble. The problem is that once you understand the technicalities behind what they have come up with you come to realise that real economic growth is the only thing that actually matters. The latest news out of Europe for many of the 17 member nations is not good at all in that regard.
Read more...By Paul de Grauwe, Professor of international economics, University of Leuven, member of the Group of Economic Policy Analysis, advising the EU Commission President Manuel Barroso, and former member of the Belgian parliament. Cross-posted from VoxEU.
The Eurozone crisis plays on to a familiar tune. Finance ministers meet on the weekend only for markets to dismiss their efforts the following Monday. This column argues that Europe’s leaders have lost touch, that the ECB has the firepower but is not prepared to use it, and that the outcome of all this is depressingly clear: Defeat by the financial markets.
Read more...Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns Today is the big European summit. Expectations are low because European politics have become messy. At the beginning of September I wrote about European political dysfunction: Clearly, [Former ECB Chief Economist Juergen] Stark sees the monetisation path the ECB is on as not at all compatible with the ECB’s mandate. Separately, […]
Read more...By Rumplestatskin, a professional economist with a broad range of interests and a diverse background in property development, environmental economics research and economic regulation. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
What few seem to appreciate, either inside or outside of Japan, is just how strong the resulting Japanese recovery from 2002-2008 was. It was the longest unbroken recovery of Japan’s postwar history, and, while not as strong as pre-bubble Japanese performance, was in fact stronger than the growth in comparable economies even when fuelled by their own bubbles.
How on Earth did Japan manage that with their ageing population and zero population growth?
Read more...By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and hedge fund manager, and Rob Parenteau, CFA, sole proprietor of MacroStrategy Edge and a research associate of The Levy Economics Institute
Historically, Greeks have been very good at constructing myths. The rest of the world? Not so great, if the current burst of commentary on the country is anything to go by. Reading the press, one gets the impression of a bunch of lazy Mediterranean scroungers, enjoying one of the highest standards of living in Europe while making the frugal Germans pick up the tab. This is a nonsensical propaganda. As if Greece is the only country ever to cook its books in the European Union! Rather, the heart of the problem is in the antiquated revenue system that supports that state, which results in a budget shortfall consistently about 10% of GDP. The top 20% of the income distribution in Greece pay virtually no taxes at all, the product of a corrupt bargain reached during the days of the junta between the military and Greece’s wealthiest plutocrats. No wonder there is a fiscal crisis!
So it’s not a problem of Greek profligates, or an overly generous welfare state, both of which suggest that the standard IMF style remedies being proposed here are bound to fail, as they are doing right now. In fact, given the non-stop austerity being imposed on Athens (which simply has the effect of deflating the economy further and thereby reducing the ability of the Greeks to hit the fiscal targets imposed on them), the Greeks really are getting close to the point where they may well default and shift the problem back to those imposing the austerity.
Read more...By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland
The infernal hurricane that never rests
Hurtles the spirits onward in its rapine;
Whirling them round, and smiting, it molests them.
– Dante, The Divine Comedy
Every now and then a terrible thought enters my mind. It runs like this: what if the theatre of the Eurocrisis is really and truly a political power-game being cynically played by politicians from the core while the periphery burns?
Yes, of course, we can engage in polemic and say that such is the case. But in doing so we are trying to stoke emotion and generally allowing our rhetorical flourish to carry the argument. At least, that is what I thought. I had heard this rhetoric; I had engaged in it to some extent myself; but I had never really believed it. Only once or twice, in my nightmares, I had thought that, maybe, just maybe, it might have some truth.
And then the Financial Times published this ‘strictly confidential’ document leaked to them from within the Eurostructure. That is when my nightmare started becoming increasingly real.
Read more...Even notice nothing is ever said in the mainstream media about Argentina’s economy, save that it had a big default? You’d never know the following about Argentina:
Read more...Look at these charts that Win Thin has crafted on sovereign bond spreads. Yes, the periphery looks bad. But look at Belgium, Austria and France. That’s the euro zone core. As I predicted in August and reiterated most recently last week when I saw Belgium’s CDS indicating a one in four chance of default: we […]
Read more...The propagandistic exhortation that we all need to need to learn to love or at least accept the crappy economy known as “the new normal” is starting to wear a bit thin. One of the things that has allowed the punditocracy to pretend that “the new normal” really isn’t all that bad are various myths that they get investors and sometimes the broader public to believe in succession or better yet simultaneously:
Read more...Edward here again. I was talking to my friend Rob Parenteau about internal devaluation. He doesn’t think it will work. His argument against it is similar to the one I have been making about the origins of this crisis. Here’s what I said. I do not believe this private sector balance sheet recession can be […]
Read more...Yves here. Note I beg to differ with Das in his comments on government debt levels for countries that control their own currency. As we’ve noted, a country can always repay debts in its own currency, and the funding of federal deficits by borrowing is a political constraint and a holdover from the gold standard era. Moreover, there is a great deal of evidence that the solution implicit in that view, of cutting government spending in the aftermath of a demand-depressing, private balance sheet wrecking global financial crisis only makes matters worse. This is a case where you need to steer into the skid to get the car back on course. But this section is not core to Das’s discussion.
By Satyajit Das, the author of Extreme Money: The Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk
Powered flight requires air to flow smoothly over the wing at a certain speed. Erratic or slow air flow can cause a plane to stall. Most modern aircraft are fitted with a “stick shaker” – a mechanical device that rapidly and noisily vibrates the control yoke or “stick” of an aircraft to warn the pilot of an imminent stall.
The global economy too needs air flow -smooth, steady and strong growth. Unfortunately, the global economy’s stick shaker is vibrating violently.
Read more...