Category Archives: Macroeconomic policy

What can the Fed do?

Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns The Federal Reserve has released its latest statement on the state of the US economy.Its Chairman Ben Bernanke has now spoken to the press as well. The overall assessment was rather downbeat. (video below) Monetary Policy’s Impotence If you compare the Fed statement to its previous one, you will understand the […]

Bill Gross: Bond Vigilante, Minsky Convert

Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns In the end, I hearken back to revered economist Hyman Minsky – a modern-day economic godfather who predicted the subprime crisis. “Big Government,” he wrote, should become the “employer of last resort” in a crisis, offering a job to anyone who wants one – for health care, street cleaning, or slum […]

Alex Andreou: Democracy vs Mythology – The Battle in Syntagma Square

By Alex Andreou, a successful lawyer turned actor living in London. Cross posted from SturdyBlog

I have never been more desperate to explain and more hopeful for your understanding of any single fact than this: The protests in Greece concern all of you directly.

What is going on in Athens at the moment is resistance against an invasion; an invasion as brutal as that against Poland in 1939. The invading army wears suits instead of uniforms and holds laptops instead of guns, but make no mistake – the attack on our sovereignty is as violent and thorough. Private wealth interests are dictating policy to a sovereign nation, which is expressly and directly against its national interest. Ignore it at your peril. Say to yourselves, if you wish, that perhaps it will stop there. That perhaps the bailiffs will not go after the Portugal and Ireland next. And then Spain and the UK. But it is already beginning to happen. This is why you cannot afford to ignore these events.

Eurozone Brinksmanship: Ministers Walk Back Greek Rollover Commitment, Demand Austerity Measures First

One of the interesting features of the seemingly unending Eurozone crisis is that the half life of rescue measures is decreasing.

The elephant in the room, which we will put aside to focus on the current state of play, is that everyone knows the Greek debts must be restructured. To have Greece pay out punitive rates on past debt will simply grind the economy into a deeper hole, worsening its debt to GDP ratio and eroding its physical and human infrastructure. All the delay of the inevitable does is allow for more extend and pretend while Western financial firms strip the economy for fun and profit. And this is terribly inefficient looting; their profits from this pilferage will be small relative to the pain inflicted on the Greek populace.

Late last week, various commentators made a bit too much of the clearing of one obstacle to the extension of yet another short lifeline to Greece, namely, that Angel Merkel had relaxed one of conditions that stood in the way of a planned €12 billion credit extension. She had wanted private creditors to share in the pain, and agreed that a rollover of currently maturing debt would do. Before she had insisted on a full bond exchange, which would have resulted in a much more significant hit to investors.

This concession did not go over well in Germany.

Stephen Roach: America is a Zombie Nation just like Japan

Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns Stephen Roach has written an Op-Ed in today’s Financial Times that is worth reading. He outlines his version of Richard Koo’s Balance Sheet Recession theorem, opining that “the global economy is being hobbled by a new generation of zombies – the economic walking dead.” His main points are: American consumers are […]

The Greek Restructuring Debate

Cross-posted with Credit Writedowns Yesterday I was on BNN’s Headline with Philip Coggan of the Economist and presenter Howard Green. The issue of greatest importance that we discussed yesterday was Greece. Last week, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble indicated readiness to accept a soft restructuring and bond exchange which would defer interest payments on Greek […]

Michael Hudson: The Financial Road to Serfdom – How Bankers are Using the Debt Crisis to Roll Back the Progressive Era

By Michael Hudson, a research professor of Economics at University of Missouri, Kansas City and a research associate at the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College. Cross posted from CounterPunch.

Financial strategists do not intend to let today’s debt crisis go to waste. Foreclosure time has arrived. That means revolution – or more accurately, a counter-revolution to roll back the 20th century’s gains made by social democracy: pensions and social security, public health care and other infrastructure providing essential services at subsidized prices or for free. The basic model follows the former Soviet Union’s post-1991 neoliberal reforms: privatization of public enterprises, a high flat tax on labor but only nominal taxes on real estate and finance, and deregulation of the economy’s prices, working conditions and credit terms.

Steve Keen: Dude! Where’s My Recovery?

By Steve Keen, Associate Professor of Economics & Finance at the University of Western Sydney, and author of the book Debunking Economics. Cross posted from Steve Keen’s Debtwatch.

I initially planned to call this post “Economic Growth, Asset Markets and the Credit Accelerator”, but recent negative data out of America makes me think that this title is more in line with conversations currently taking place in the White House.

According to the NBER, the “Great Recession” is now two years behind us, but the recovery that normally follows a recession has not occurred. While growth did rise for a while, it has been anaemic compared to the norm after a recession, and it is already trending down. Growth needs to exceed 3 per cent per annum to reduce unemployment—the rule of thumb known as Okun’s Law—and it needs to be substantially higher than this to make serious inroads into it. Instead, growth barely peeped its head above Okun’s level. It is now below it again, and trending down.

The ECB’s Target2 activities are not constraining German credit growth

Cross-posted from Credit Writedowns Perhaps you have seen Hans-Werner Sinn’s incendiary commentary from 1 Jun on the ECB’s stealth bailout. Well, Karl Whelan who has many years’ central bank experience finds that “Professor Sinn’s analysis is incorrect and that his policy prescriptions are extremely dangerous”. He wrote a recent post at Vox, which Credit Writedowns […]

William Dudley on Economic Policy

Cross -posted from Credit Writedowns New York Fed Chief William Dudley gave a speech yesterday called “U.S. Economic Policy in a Global Context” (hat tip Yves Smith). Dudley’s overall aim was to show that one must regard US policy in an international context and not based on domestic factors alone. I think the whole Speech […]

Philip Pilkington: Down in the Hole – Is America Becoming the Next Japan?

Philip Pilkington is a journalist currently sinking, together with the rest of his fellow countrymen, down into the hole in the Irish banking system

Will all your money
Keep you from madness
Keep you from sadness
When you’re down in the hole

Cause you’ll be down in the gutter
You’ll be bumming for cigarettes
Bumming for nylons
In the American Zone
–‘Down in the Hole’, The Rolling Stones

Everyone who is anyone is saying it: the US looks set to become the next Japan. Yet the particulars of the argument are never really trashed out. Certainly both countries suffer from the same malady – namely, a bursting asset bubble punching gigantic holes in private sector balance sheets. This leads to similar policy approaches – not to mention similar policy failures. But beyond this overarching comparison people tend not to tread.

Let’s start from the beginning; the asset bubbles that set off the crises.

Alexander Gloy: Merkel to Sinn: “In my office. NOW.”

Yves here. Outbreaks of candor and foresight among the political classes are so rare that they bear watching. As Gloy’s sighting suggests, they have to be arrested quickly lest they prove to be contagious.

By Alexander Gloy, CIO of Lighthouse Investment Management

Hans-Werner Sinn, head of German research institute Ifo, has just put his life into peril. He had to pick a Swiss magazine (“Bilanz”) to express what nobody else is allowed to mention in Germany: “Greece is a bottomless barrel”.