Author Archives: Yves Smith

Russia to Launch New Payments System to Circumvent SWIFT Network

Many observers have become unduly excited about what they depict as efforts to break the dollar hegeomony, such as the joint effort by the so-called BRICS nations to form a development bank. While having a suite of internationals funding entities, particularly ones focused on activities that in theory increase the collective benefits of relying on a reserve currency, are seen to be important, it does not follow that launching useful new funding institutions will break dollar dominance. As much as US abuse of its position as issuer of the reserve currency is correctly resented, there isn’t a competitor waiting in the wings. The Eurozone has blown it with its failure to clean up even sicker banks than the US has, and by compounding a bad situation with its adherence to destructive austerity policies. China clearly has the potential to displace the US longer-term, but it is unwilling to run the requisite trade deficits, since that means exporting demand and hence jobs. And no country had made the transition from being a major exporter to being consumer-driven smoothly; a crisis or protracted malaise would also delay China displacing the US as currency top dog.

But not being able to get rid of the dollar any time soon does not mean that countries that the US is trying to punish by using its influence over international payments system won’t find nearer-term escape routes.

Should We Believe the Bank of England’s “No More Bailouts” Promise?

Michael Hudson sent an article No more bailouts: BoE chief says banks won’t be saved by taxpayers and wondered if we should take it at face value.

The short answer is “almost certainly not” but it also depends on what you mean by “saved by taxpayers”.

Links 11/11/14

Ed Harrison: Zero Rates, Resource Misallocation, and Shale Oil

Yves here. Established Naked Capitalism readers may recall that Ed Harrison was a regular and much appreciated contributor to the site, particularly in 2009 when I was on partial book leave writing ECONNED. Ed now focuses more on writing premium content, as well as producing RT’s Boom and Bust. But he is now posting occasional pieces on his non-subscription site, and has graciously allowed us to post them from time to time.

This article is a more systematic work-up of something that we’ve discussed short form and Wolf Richter has also written up: that of the dependence of the shale oil boom on reasonably high oil prices as well as cheap financing. And as predicted, shale oil producers have shut marginal wells, and even majors are cutting back on oil production.

Coalition Launches World War on Youth

Yves here. I must confess to not being anywhere near as on top of Australian politics as I’d like to be, and I have a great deal of difficulty understanding the ascendancy of Liberal leader and now Prime Minister Tony Abbott, save that in a parliamentary system, who winds up on top often has more to do with infighting skills than real leadership. This post shows that the latest Abbot scheme for addressing youth un and under employment is a serious contender for Worst Neoliberal Post-Crisis Policy Evah. And recall it has QE as a competitor. So this post serves to launch a watch for Really Horrid Neoliberal Policies so we can start creating a taxonomy, which helps in making fun of them.

For starters, how smart is it to throw young people under the bus in an economy that has become almost entirely a real estate one trick pony? Where is household formation going to come from, exactly? Chinese investors and Chinese-driven extraction boom have both provided a big lift to Oz over most of the last decade. Deflation across non-agricultural commodities is a strong tell that that game is past its sell-by date.

One of the things I noticed briefly about Australian policies when I lived there is that they were weirdly bimodal, as in either really well thought out or terrible. This was confirmed by some Canadian policy wonks I met who said when they were looking for policy ideas from other countries, they’d look at Australia first because they were most likely to have gotten it right. The new Abbott policy suggests that capability is being destroyed.

Links 11/10/14

SEC Commissioners Kara Stein, Luis Aguilar Hit Bank of America Where it Hurts, in a Revenue Stream

SEC Commissioners Kara Stein and Luis Aguilar have found a weapon that looks to have financial firms more worried than being whacked with one-time fines. They are threatening to hit Bank of America in an ongoing revenue stream.

By way of background, Kara Stein, who joined the SEC in last August, has gone to war with SEC chairman Mary Jo White over lax enforcement and other types of overly-financial-firm-friendly conduct. It’s virtually unheard of for a commissioner to cross swords with a chairman from the same party.

Stein and her fellow Democratic party commissioner Luis Aguilar have joined forces to stymie a Bank of America settlement they saw as too generous by virtue of waving certain sanctions that would otherwise automatically kick in.

The Funny Math in the GOP’s Energy Agenda

Yves here. One of the new forms of political handicapping is forecasting which policies newly-ascendant Republicans will put in the forefront and how likely they are to make meaningful progress with them. Corporate taxes are clearly high on their wish list, and one where corporate Democrats will be keen to pretend to be forced to capitulate go along. Another is their energy agenda, which is basically, “let no environmental protection stand in the way of more extraction.”

Now having said that, the Obama position really wasn’t as different as Democratic party loyalists would have you believe. Obama was clearly all in for fracking, and as Gaius Publius set forth in a series of posts, clearly cooked the greenhouse gas emission figures by excluding methane, the most potent greenhouse gas. But even the awfully energy friendly Administration wasn’t as aggressive as the Republicans will prove to be.

Peter Van Buren: What Could Possibly Go Right? Four Months Into Iraq War 3.0, the Cracks Are Showing

Yves here. This post, which discusses the barmy US idea that we can create an effective Iraq army having failed in two previous efforts, fails to use a key word: mercenaries. Normally, if you aren’t willing or able to have your own citizens act as soldiers, the next best solution was to hire mercenaries. History shows that does not generally work very well, even though it probably does beat doing nothing. Here, the idea of training locals to do our dirty work, out of allegiance to “Iraq,” a made-up country consisting largely of tribal and ethnic groups that don’t play well together in times of upheaval, is questionable on its face, independent of our poor history with this experiment. But the US seems to be in “if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem will be defined to be a nail” mode.

Links 11/9/14

Matt Stoller: Why the Democratic Party Acts The Way It Does

There is no end to the whining from Democratic activists after a rotten election, and no end to finger pointing after legislative defeats on contentious questions. This story in the Washington Post is the tell-all of the 2014 wipe-out, featuring the standard recriminations between the President and Congress. In it, the chief of staff of the Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid, David Krone, attacks the White House. “We were never going to get on the same page… We were beating our heads against the wall.” The litany of excuses is long. Democratic candidates were arrogant. The White House failed to transfer money, or stump effectively. The GOP caught up in the technology race, or the GOP recruited excellent disciplined candidates.

Everything is put on the table, except the main course — policy. Did the Democrats run the government well? Are the lives of voters better? Are you as a political party credible when you say you’ll do something?

This question is never asked, because Democratic elites — ensconced in the law firms, foundations, banks, and media executive suites where the real decisions are made — basically agree with each other about organizing governance around the needs of high technology and high finance. The only time the question even comes up now is in an inverted corroded form, when a liberal activist gnashes his or her teeth and wonders — why can’t Democrats run elections around populist themes and policies?

This is still the wrong question, because it assumes the wrong causality.

Ilargi: The Broken Model of the Eurozone

Yves here. There is a solution of sorts to the problem of the “competitiveness” of Eurozone periphery countries, which is for them to lower wage rates to improve their terms of trade. Unfortunately, that still does not resolve the issue of needed to import other inputs, like energy and sometimes raw materials, at Eurozone-wide price levels. And the response to crushing wages (or the super high unemployment that results from not being able to “adjust”) is that the people most able to leave, which is usually the young and best educated, depart.

Links 11/8/14