2016: Oil Limits and the End of the Debt Supercycle
How tight linkages among phenomena, such as oil and commodity prices, and flagging non-elite wages, are about to cause substantial economic disruption.
Read more...Category Archives: Economic fundamentals
China’s Contradictory Aims, Greater International Role Versus Domestic Economic Control, HIt Breaking Point
China appears to be in denial that it can’t have more open financial markets and maintain the same degree of control over the economy that it once enjoyed.
Read more...Identifying Vectors Influencing China’s (and International) Markets
A list of some of the factors driving the recent market upheaval in China. Readers will hopefully add to and refine this compilation.
Read more...Why Lowering the Marginal Corporate Tax Rate Does Not Increase Growth
A new paper puts another nail in the coffin to the idea that lowering corporate tax rates will boost growth.
Read more...Another Slow Year for the Global Economy
The factors that dragged down the global economy in 2015 will persist – and in some cases worsen – in the new year.
Read more...Deflation Denialism: No, Chancellor, 0.5% Inflation is Not “Welcome News”
What is deflation? What has caused inflation to fall? And why is there no such thing as ‘good deflation’?
Read more...Start-Up Governments, or Can Bureaucracies Innovate?
What makes bureaucracies innovative?
Read more...Wolf Richter: Welcome to 2016! With Just a Touch of Mayhem for Stocks
Stocks took a beating around the globe on the first day back in 2016. Hopes of a better year start out inauspiciously.
Read more...Private Equity Made Bad Bet on Ships, Hit by Collapse in China Trade
Private equity’s misadventure in ships is yet another proof of both hubris and too much money looking for deals.
Read more...Louis Proyect: Greece as Rashomon
Like Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon”, the story of Syriza is also one about a rape told from different, self-serving and contradictory perspectives.
Read more...The Obama Report Card: The Good, the Bad and the Incomplete
Why are so many people in the soi-disant left who are not career progressives, meaning not part of the Vichy Left, so cautious about calling out Obama’s failures?
Read more...Michael Hudson: The Top Three Economic Stories of 2015
Yves here. I beg to differ a tad with Hudson in this Real News Network video regarding his third economic story. The US had already pushed Europe to side with it against Russia when it hit Russia with economic sanctions. The US had similarly declared an economic war of sorts against China with its “pivot […]
Read more...Matthew Cunningham-Cook: Five Reasons Tariffs Are Great
Saying tariffs could be a good thing is close to a taboo in economics. Is that distaste justified?
Read more...Ilargi: 2016 Is An Easy Year To Predict
Deflation will become an even more powerful and destructive force in 2016.
Read more...“Summer” Rerun: “Why America Will Need Some Elements of a Welfare State”
In 2007, the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf Wolf concluded that America needed some form of a welfare state. His argument is as valid now as then. Yet it is hard to imagine that anyone would make it now, particularly in light of the effort of soi-disant liberals to pretend that Obamacare insurance policies bear any resemblance to “universal health care”.
Read more...