Wall Street Journal Questions Fed Beige Book “Rosy” Take on “Recovery”
Is the august Wall Street Journal hinting that the “recovery” has no clothes?
Read more...Category Archives: Economic fundamentals
Satyajit Das: My Big Fat Greek Crisis
Yves here. Das published this post in February and I thought it would be useful to reprise it for three reasons. First, it has held up well to the passage of time. Second, for latecomers to the Greek saga, it summarizes the background, the stances of the parties, and key economic and financial considerations. Third, the section starting “Controlled Warfare” (about 2/3 of the way through the post) summarizes the consequences to the lenders of a Grexit. Those risks are why almost no one thought we’d wind up where we are now, with two sides issuing ultimatums a mere two days before a possible Greek default, and why most of the financial media still believes a deal will get done.
Read more...“The Notion of the Competitiveness of Countries is Nonsense”
A 2004 book by Martin Wolf provided the intellectual foundation for the competitiveness fad. Ironically, Wolf debunked his own thesis in it.
Read more...Greece’s Shortening Negotiating Runway and Possibly Erroneous Assumptions
Le Monde published a defiant op ed by Alex Tsipras over the weekend. The wee problem is that Greece is well past the point where political appeals will work.
Read more...Wolf Richter: When Betting on QE Suddenly Goes Wrong
Central banks think they’re omnipotent – until they aren’t.
Read more...Michael Hudson: Ukraine’s “Operation Vulture” and Labor Protests
Hudson’s so-called “Operation Vulture,” the strip-mining of what little is left of a functioning economy in Ukraine, comes straight out of the neoliberal playbook.
Read more...The Fed’s Dereliction of Duty and False Capital Flows Morality
The Fed disavows responsibility for the way US interest rate policy sends money sloshing around the world. It’s a huge mistake intellectually and politically.
Read more...Corruptionomics in Italy
As reader Li, an international road warrior, says, “America is getting to be just like Italy, except without the attractive men.”
Read more...The Shafting, Um, Sharing Economy
The Wall Street Journal, of all places, describes the dark economic underbelly of Uber and other Orwellianly-named “sharing” services.
Read more...A Parallel Currency for Greece: Part II
Yves here. I’m quite interested in reader reactions to this scheme. My big reservation is that the amount of the scrip devised by the authors, the TCC, has to be limited to the an amount of discount of future tax payments that is deemed to be credible. Given that Bill Mitchell has estimated that Greece […]
Read more...Wolf Richter: Atlanta Fed ‘Sticky CPI’ Soars, Hottest Inflation Since July 2008
A jump in “sticky CPI” suggests the Fed may be close to getting the data excuses it needs to raise interest rates.
Read more...IMF Paper Finds That Too Much Finance is Bad for Growth
A new IMF paper strikes another blow against the idea that Big Finance is good for you.
Read more...Greece Cornered as IMF and ECB Refuse to Relent
A flurry of stories this weekend confirms that Greece and its creditors remain hopelessly at odds. The inertial path is to a Greek default
Read more...Bill Black: Krugman is Half Right
Paul Krugman’s latest column fingers some valid targets but lets way too many other equally deserving ones off.
Read more...“Why Syriza Will Blink”
Anatole Kaletsky has a cognent, forcefully argued new article at the Project Syndicate website, Why Syriza Will Blink, which independently comes to the conclusion we’ve reached, that the winning strategy for the creditors is to keep Greece in the sweatbox and use worsening economic and social conditions in Greece to crush domestic support for Syriza. Kaletsky goes further than we have, arguing that this is the course the Troika is taking, and the new coalition should have anticipated this as a likely strategy, since it’s the same one they used successfully against Cyprus two years ago.
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