Pettis: China and the History of US Growth Models
Yves here. This is an important piece, in that it bucks conventional wisdom about growth and economic development in several ways.
Read more...Category Archives: Economic fundamentals
Yanis Varoufakis: Are Ireland and Portugal out of the Woods? (Updated)
By Yanis Varoufakis, Professor of Economics at the University of Athens. Cross posted from his blog
Ireland and Portugal have, recently, tested the water of the money markets with some success. But does this mean that they are out of the woods?
Read more...Is the Euro Crisis Over?
By Robert Guttmann, Professor of Economics at Hofstra University and a visiting Professor at University of Paris, Nord. Cross posted from Triple Crisis
A strange calm has settled over Europe. Following Mr. Draghi’s July 2012 promise “to do whatever it takes” to save the euro, which the head of the European Central Bank followed shortly thereafter with a new program of potentially unlimited bond buying known as “outright monetary transactions,” the market panic evaporated. This calming of once-panicky debt markets has led to optimistic assessments that the worst of the crisis has passed. All this begs the obvious question whether this major shift in mood is justified and as such durable or just a temporary break before the next storm.
Read more...Europe’s Imbalances Widen
By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
While the latest European PMI is showing some improvement it has become apparent that imbalances are growing ever-greater in the zone.
Read more...Reflections on the Current Belief That Housing Will Come Roaring Back
By George Feiger, CEO of Contango Capital Advisors. From Contango’s current “Heard off the Street” newsletter
We question whether the widely held judgment that the US handled its banking crisis much better than the Europeans will survive the inevitable upturn in interest rates.
Read more...Richard Koo Debunks the “Deleveraging is Almost Done, American Consumer Getting Ready for Good Times” Meme
Richard Koo of Nomura published an important piece earlier this week which got some attention in the financial blogosphere (Clusterstock, FT Alphaville). It takes issue with a critical part of the economist optimists’ case, namely, that consumer deleveraging is about done and therefore the economy is likely to perform much better in the next few years.
Read more...German Hope, French Despair
By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
Eurozone Flash PMI for January came out overnight and the news was relatively good overall, although it must be noted that contraction continues across the zone.
Read more...China Economic Paradigm Nearing End Game
GMO, in a compelling analysis, not only confirms the skeptics’ case but provides reasons why the Chinese growth model faces an end game. While it may not be nigh, it seems to be closer than most people think.
Read more...What are the German Bankers Thinking?
Some readers would probably come up with less polite versions of the question above, but regardless of how one states it, policy in the Eurozone is very much driven by both the needs and the wants of German banks.
Read more...Philip Pilkington: The Japanese Stimulus – Will It Work?
By Philip Pilkington, a writer and research assistant at Kingston University in London. You can follow him on Twitter @pilkingtonphil
There’s a lot of talk flying around about the Japanese stimulus. Some appears to be misguided, some appears to be sensible.
Read more...Joe Firestone: The Great Austerity Swindle!
By Joe Firestone, Ph.D., Managing Director, CEO of the Knowledge Management Consortium International (KMCI), and Director of KMCI’s CKIM Certificate program. He has taught political science as the graduate and undergraduate level and blogs regularly at Corrente, Firedoglake and Daily Kos as letsgetitdone. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
Our Congresspeople, corporate CEOs, tea partiers, most economists, Pete Peterson’s minions, and even our President, tell us that we’re running out of money; and that we can’t keep running huge deficits, and increasing our national debt forever, because eventually, our creditors will just cease lending us our dollars back….
Read more...Devolution: Welcome to the World Where Things Don’t Work Well
When I took the introductory fine arts course in college (which actually was a tough course), one of the ideas that stuck with me was devolution.
Read more...Dan Kervick: US Double-Dip Death Watch Continues
By Dan Kervick, who does research in decision theory and analytic metaphysics. Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives
I thought I would take a break from the latest outburst of debt ceiling mania to call attention once again to the bipartisan plan of budget austerity and recession-tempting economic devastation that will be implemented in March in one form or another, and from which the debt ceiling debate is designed to distract us.
Read more...Debunking (Yet Another) Scaremongering New York Times Op Ed on Social Security
Some readers were decidedly unhappy about a New York Times op-ed over the weekend by Gary King and Samir Soneji that argued the need to reform Social Security was even more urgent than the catfood futures sellers thought because people are going to live longer than the budget mavens assume. Given the op-ed space limits, the authors couldn’t supply much in the way of backup for their views, but the argument was that improvements in longevity due to the decline in smoking and improved cardiovascular health were not adequately reflected in the data.
It’s not clear that we should take this forecast all that seriously.
Read more...IMF Admits More Mistakes
By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.
I’ve commented numerous times over the the last 3 years that I considered the IMF’s position on Europe dangerously misguided as I felt it was based more on ideology than evidential analysis (see more here). The results have been so bad that the IMF is being forced to admit to the errors of its ways.
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