Category Archives: Economic fundamentals

Puzzling Economic Sightings

Now and again I ask readers for input on what they are seeing locally, a sort of regional check on the statistics and media reports on how the economy is faring.

I’ve seen some things in my backyard that have me puzzled and wondered if readers see similar patterns.

Sasha Breger: How Commodities Hoarding Distorts Food Prices

Despite financial firms’ pious claims to the contrary, their commodities machinations extract wealth from agricultural providers, and thus also ultimately from consumers.

Nikkei Disses Third Dose of Abenomics, Falls Nearly 4%

The financial media and investors were waiting tonight for Prime Minister Abe’s latest announcement on the extreme economic sport known as Abenomics. But his new installment dashed hopes, and after a short-lived rally, the Nikkei is down over 3%. But after the wild ride since May 22, when the Japanese index plunged 7.3%, a 3% decline is coming to look almost like normal daily volatility. (Well, now that it’s down nearly 4%, it might be a beast of a different color).

Yanis Varoufakis: Mixed Messages from the IMF

Yves here. Note how the need to pretend Deutsche Bank is not undercapitalized, mentioned in passing in this post, is playing into policy.

An interview by Yanis Varoufakis, Professor of Economics at the University of Athens, with Tomas Hirst of Pieria. Cross posted from Yanis Varoufakis’ blog.

Sasha Breger: How Big Finance is Eating the World’s Lunch Agricultural Wealth

If you hear a kind of whooshing, rushing noise, don’t worry—it’s not US jobs moving to China. Today’s great sucking sound is the sound of agricultural wealth being siphoned off into the global financial system.

So Who is the Dumb Money Ruining the Rental Housing Market?

The head of Carrington, which is known as an established distressed debt investor and more recently, an early entrant in the single family home rental business, said this week it was no longer buying houses for lease because dumb money had ruined the market.

Richard Alford: The “Dutch Disease” and Once and Future Economic Crises in the US

By Richard Alford, a former New York Fed economist. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side.

The term Dutch Disease refers to negative macro-economic effects on a country of a boom in commodity exports or other developments that result in large capital inflows. It may be that the Dutch Disease contributed to the recent US recession and that the prospective energy-led US economic recovery could amount to nothing more than another bout of the Dutch Disease.

The Case for 4% Inflation

Yves here. Some readers are likely to recoil at the idea that more inflation might be a good thing. But the flip side is that economists are still fighting the war of the 1970s.

The Fed Has Painted Itself in a Corner

I welcome readers telling me I’ve missed something, but looking at the Fed’s problem from 50,000 feet, it appears that the the monetary authority appears to have set boundary conditions for its QE exit that it can’t meet.

Yanis Varoufakis: Greek Success Story: The latest Orwellian Turn of the Greek Crisis

Greece’s Prime Minister recently flew to China, to woo Chinese investors. In his bid to be persuasive, he adopted a radical narrative: Greece is a Success Story. A country that almost perished in 2012 is now on the mend; on the road to stabilisation and growth; a wonderful opportunity, currently, for investors to pick up ultra cheap investments and to benefit from the forthcoming growth. How much of this is true, however?

David Dayen: FSOC Annual Report Shows Continued Interest in Austerity Bargain Over Reducing Financial System

With Jack Lew now installed at Treasury, I decided to take a look at the annual report of the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), the Dodd-Frank creation that’s supposed to monitor systemic risk. We already know the leanings of the not-so-new regime at Treasury: they think Dodd-Frank worked to secure a more stable financial system, an opinion reiterated Tuesday at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

David Dayen: The Uprising of the Second Tier in a Time of Late Capitalism

The past several years have demonstrated the obvious point that inequality and depression will combine to produce flares of mass social unrest. You see this in Europe and the Middle East, where rising food prices had as much to do with the Arab Spring as decades of political repression. Things are no different here in America. Even though elites are fortunate enough to have a militarized local law enforcement apparatus in place to make sure the rabble doesn’t get too out of control, these flares, indications of broader awareness that in an economy rigged against them, the only recourse is to step outside the system and shout to the heavens. We’ve seen this before in US history; it was called the Gilded Age, and it led to the set of progressive reforms as well as a legacy of labor organizing that might, just might, be awakening from what seems like a decades-long slumber.

Private Equity Residential Landlords Rushing to Cash Out via IPOs

We’ve been skeptical of the private equity land rush to snap up single family homes for rentals. They’ve been a big enough force in the housing market nationwide to lead some commentators to question how solid the housing “recovery” is. Yet the combination of rising enthusiasm for housing and a richly-valued stock market is leading a raft of PE firms to ready IPOs as a way to take profits and establish valuations for their profit participations.