Need a Loan in China? Hand Over a Nude Photo
Lender demands in China as a sign of credit stress.
Read more...Category Archives: Doomsday scenarios
More Collateral Damage From Negative Interest Rates (Updated and Corrected)
Spain demonstrates some of the costs and dislocations created by negative interest rate policies.
Read more...Why a Leave Vote May Not Result in a Brexit
The ruling classes in the UK will be highly motivated to try to get the Brexit genie back in the bottle.
Read more...Bond Market Flight to Safety as Investors Sweat Over Brexit Risk, Wobbly US Economy, Negative Rates
Investors got a big dose of bad news about the economy and geopolitics and reacted accordingly.
Read more...Banks Rebel Against Negative Interest Rates
Banks have had it with negative interest rates and are starting to push back.
Read more...Artificial Intelligence and Employment
The substitution of human labour by artificial intelligence and robots is a keenly debated topic. Some claim that a substantial share of jobs is at risk, while others argue that computers and robots will lead to product innovations and hence to unimaginable new occupations. This column uses a survey of Japanese firms to examine the impact of AI-related technologies on business and employment. Overall, firms expect a positive impact on business but a negative impact on employment. Firms with a highly skilled workforce, however, have a more optimistic view than firms with lower skilled employees.
Read more...Tom Engelhardt: How Donald Trump Reveals the March of American Authoritarianism
Trump as a symbol of an America morphing into a visibly less democratic fading empire.
Read more...Debate: Is “Degrowth” the Way to Reduce Greenhouse Gases?
A debate on sustainable growth versus degrowth.
Read more...Steve Keen: Zombie-to-Be Economies and the Walking Dead of Debt Include China, South Korea, Canada, Finland
Steve Keen’s macroeconomic model allows him to identify zombies-in-the-making. It’s not pretty.
Read more...The Abandonment of Countercyclical Fiscal Policy
Economists bemoan the lack of aggressive fiscal spending after the crisis. Funny how few of them were willing to advocate it when it mattered.
Read more...Michael Pettis: China – How Much Investment is Optimal?
If China’s very low level of social capital has long ago made its investment strategy obsolete, that suggests that China has overinvested beyond its capacity to utilize these investments economically. Thus there are hidden losses on bank balance sheets created by the failure to write down physical capital to its true value. In this case Chinese growth cannot help but drop significantly as these losses are finally recognized and as investment levels are sharply curtailed.
Read more...Hoisted From Comments: Neoliberalism Tearing Societies Apart
The true destructiveness of neoliberalism is becoming more and more apparent.
Read more...Andrew Bacevich: The US in the Middle East – “There Is No Strategy”
At best, the US is waging a war of attrition in the Middle East. And we ignore the fact that people in that part of the world hold grudges for centuries.
Read more...How Bank Networks Amplify Financial Crises: Evidence from the Great Depression
The Global Crisis emphasized the fragility of international financial networks. Despite this, there has been little historical research into how networks propagate financial shocks. This column explores how interbank networks transmitted liquidity shocks through the US banking system during the Great Depression. During banking panics, the pyramided-structure of reserves forced troubled banks to reduce lending, thus amplifying the decline in investment spending.
Read more...IMF Not Funding July Greece Deal, Still Wants Serious Debt Relief Before Committing New Dough
The IMF has not given up on debt relief for Greece, but due to the upcoming Brexit vote, is holding off on the fight until fall.
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