Category Archives: Doomsday scenarios

Wage Shares Fall in the US, Germany and Many Other Countries While Financial Shocks Hit Emerging Economies

ves here. This Real News Network interview with Yilmaz Akyuz, formerly the Director of the Division on Globalization and Development Strategies at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), describes how the problems that produced the financial crisis have morphed into new, no less troubling problems. One key part of this discussion focuses on how China has adapted to its considerably smaller trade surplus, and why having Germany as the new excessive exporter poses new perils to the global economy.

Determined Ignorance on Climate Change: Still Impervious to Facts

Climate change is a hard policy question to address because it pits those who believe in evidence against those committed to knowing as little as possible.

Philip Pilkington: Keynes’ Liquidity Preference Trumps Debt Deflation in 1931 and 2008

Why defining “liquidity trap” precisely matters in understanding crisis dynamics, and Keynes, and not Krugman, got it right.

Will the U.S. Follow the U.K. Into Power Shortages?

Britain endeavors to build new nuclear power plants to avert an electric crisis in 20 years – with the retirement of nearly all the nation’s installed capacity, as it falls prey to age. Is the United States is destined for the same crisis?

Versailles Watch: John Mack Whines About How Badly Wall Street CEOs are Treated

You cannot make this stuff up.

Whatever You Do, Don’t Pay Attention to the Rising Eurozone Stresses

One of the noteworthy elements of Davos, at least according to media accounts, was the cheery, self-congratulatory tone among the Davos Men, at least until the final day, when the emerging markets rout began. But one of the front they thought they’d gotten under control, Europe, may be about to enter a new phase of political stress.

The Embattled Climate Scientist Who Fought Back

Real News Network interviewed climate scientist Michael Mann, who has come under vicious and persistent attack by right-wing groups who decided to play a reductivist game and focus their attack on one chart Mann developed which became important in popular discussions of climate change.

Philip Pilkington: Paul Krugman Pushes Factually Inaccurate Arguments About Argentina to Support Discredited Monetarist Ideas

Yves here. With Argentina one of the emerging markets economies whose currency has taken a huge tumble, its aggressive pro-labor, redistribution-oriented policies have come under attack (as an aside, one has to note that Turkey, which was touted as a model emerging economy a few years back, is also fighting a currency downspiral). And a predictable by-product is that some of Argentina’s policies have been misrepresented. For instance, it’s widely accused of “living beyond its means”. Yet as this post shows, the government ran surpluses in eight of the past ten years.

Danger of Global Recession After 30 Years of Neoliberal Counterrevolution

Heiner Flassbeck is one of the few economists to get into positions of influence despite being firmly opposed to the prevailing doctrine of neoliberalism. He’s also direct and articulate.

Yanis Varoufakis: Germany’s Choice: Authoritarianism or Hegemony? (*)

For those of us who grew up under totalitarian regimes, it is noteworthy that Europeans are resorting to a time-honoured tradition: telling jokes as a form of defiance.

Market Rout Continues, Proving Abject Failure of Fed’s Forecasts and Policies (Updated)

In case you missed it, it’s ugly out there. US markets swooned as an unexpectedly weak manufacturing report, the ISM, was so bad it couldn’t be attributed solely to bad weather and deepened investor funk.

Emerging Markets Contagion Starting to Hit Eurozone

Emerging markets-related disruption continued overnight, as the Nikkei fell nearly 2%, pounded by the rise in the yen due to its status as a flight currency. Other Asian markets took a hit as well, with only Australia emerging relatively unscathed.

Former IMF Chief Economist, Now India’s Central Bank Governor Rajan Takes Shot at Bernanke’s Destabilizing Policies

As Bernanke is about to take leave of office, attacks on his policies are becoming louder, thanks to financial markets turmoil resulting from the Bernanke/Geithner approach to the crisis: do whatever it takes to restore as much of status quo ante as possible. The problem, of course, is that status quo ante is what got us in this mess in the first place.

George Mangus Warns of Broad Impact of Emerging Markets Turbulence

In the runup to the global financial crisis, George Magnus, who was then chief economist at UBS, was one of the most insightful commentators and was early to call how bad things might get. He’s back to sound alarms about the emerging markets turmoil.

The Emerging Markets Rout Abates….for Now

Journalists and laypeople tend to use stock markets at their proxy for economic and financial market conditions. The performance of US stock markets looked like an encouraging return to a semblance of normalcy after last week’s squall, until a wave of selling in the final hour, with 600 million shares of volume, pushed the major indexes solidly into negative territory. As of this writing, that barometer is still a bit wobbly. Australia was down 1.26% overnight and the Nikkei off .17%. But Chinese and the Singapore markets are up, as are European and the S&P and DJIA indices.

But some of the explanations are less persuasive than others.