Category Archives: Economic fundamentals

Time to Look Behind the Curtain and See Who is Against Full Employment

Have you noticed how political leaders are nowhere near as upset about unemployment as they ought to be? What gives?

QE Forever?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in a provocative column, argues that the monetary authorities are not going retreating from QE, and that might not be a bad thing. But in its current form, it probably is.

Euro-da-Fé

By Dan Kervick, who does research in decision theory and analytic metaphysics. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives

(Brussels) Nonplussed by this week’s unemployment report showing the Eurozone jobless rate rising to an unprecedented 12%, members of the European Parliament and Europe’s national governments pressed ahead on Wednesday with passage of a stringent new package of austerity measures. Dubbed “hyperaustérité” or “Übersparpolitik” by its backers, the new program of ruthless cuts and social demolition promises to deliver even higher levels of joblessness, misery and hopelessness than has been achieved so far by earlier rounds of austerity.

Bill Greider on Why Paul Krugman Was So Wrong

A good piece in the Nation by Bill Greider, which focuses on Krugman’s long standing support of free trade, and how, contrary to his predictions, the results were not positive for ordinary American workers.

Richard Alford: Fed Policy – Old Wine in New Bottles

Yves here. This is an important post, in that it describes how the Fed, despite the unconventional look of some of its measures, is using more extreme variants of traditional policy approaches, and why that is not such a hot idea.

Destruction of Cyprus Economy Proceeding Ahead of Schedule

When I first heard about the Cyprus ~~ritual execution~~ bailout, I had thought that the widespread predictions that the island nation’s economy would contract by 20% to 30% over the next two years were off base.

Michael Hudson Discusses Why We Need Public Banks to Prevent Cannibalization of the Economy on Real News Network

Michael Hudson continues his discussion of banking on Real News Network by focusing on the role banks played in different economies in the early period of industrialization.

Will Slovenia Be the Next Victim of German Politics?

The IMF says that Slovenia will need to issue €3 billion in bonds this year. The country may be forced to seek painful assistance from the Troika. Will Germany be the heavy as it was with Cyprus?

The Capital Controls in Cyprus and the Icelandic Experience

Cyprus has imposed temporary capital controls. This column sheds light on how temporary and how damaging they are likely to be, based on Iceland’s experience. The longer controls exist, the harder they are to abolish. Icelandic capital controls, which have been ‘temporary’ for half a decade, deeply damage the economy by discouraging investment.

Barack Obama’s Economic Legacy: The Billionaire-Boosting Big Four on His Wish List

By Gaius Publius. Follow him on Twitter @Gaius_Publius. Cross posted from AmericaBlog

I’ve been writing about Obama’s Legacy Tour (sorry, his second term) from time to time without focusing on the legacy itself. So this post will lay down a marker — in brief, what’s on Obama’s economic legacy list, and what will he get if he succeeds?

Wolf Richter: The Stunning Differences In European Costs Of Labor – Or Why “Competitiveness” Is A Beggar-Thy-Neighbor Strategy

By Wolf Richter, San Francisco based executive, entrepreneur, start up specialist, and author, with extensive international work experience. Cross posted from Testosterone Pit.

The ominous term, “competitiveness” has been bandied about as the real issue, the one that causes European countries, in particular some of those stuck in the Eurozone, to sink ever deeper into their fiasco. To fix that issue, “structural reforms,” or austerity, have been invoked regardless of how much blood might stain the streets. And a core element of these structural reforms is bringing down the cost of labor. But productivity, infrastructure, transportation costs, corruption, training and education, etc. all figure prominently into this equation. Cost of labor is not the only factor.

The Terrifying Political Economy of Waiting

By Nathan Tankus, a student and research assistant at the University of Ottawa. You can follow him on Twitter at @NathanTankus

Remember, things are darkest before they go completely black.

Wolf Richter: A CEO Explains Why He Sold A German Soul To The Chinese

Yves here. I find this story of a Chinese acquisition gone pear shaped interesting for several reasons. Since academic research consistently finds that the majority of acquisitions are losers for the buyers, it’s not a surprise that the deal did not work out. But this one looks to be a particularly extreme fail. Having worked a bit on international deals, and for companies operating in foreign markets, cross border transactions have an even lower success rate than domestic ones. The big reason is the one mentioned here, which is marked cultural incompatibility between the seller and buyer. Here the Chinese did less badly than they could have (they could have tried forcing Chinese practices on the German operation, which would have destroyed the value of the asset). But the logic of the transaction was unclear. Was it technology transfer? Consolidation? It appears both might have been goals, and neither happened very much.

While Cyprus Sinks, France and Slovenia Start to Founder

The official sick man list of Europe has long been the PIIGS, or if you prefer, the GIPSI: Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal. As the Cyprus restructuring drama has moved into high gear, it’s obscured news of a serious deterioration in the French economy and the weakened condition of Slovenia, which has a population and GDP roughly 1.5 times as large as that of Cyprus.

Krugman’s Bad Math on Cyprus

Paul Krugman, in a post earlier today, Cyprus: The Sum of All FUBAR, acts as if he has figured out what is the real problem with Cyprus. The only problem is his math is all wrong, and a better analysis undermines his major assertions.