Category Archives: Economic fundamentals

Wolf Richter: “German Success Recipe” or Blip?

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

Despite the Eurozone debt crisis, the German economy has been on a roll, with unemployment at a 20-year low. Exports surpassed €1 trillion for the first time ever. The Federation of Wholesale and Foreign Trade even issued a card to commemorate the moment. For the year, exports rose 12%. In 2012—based on demand from Asia, Latin America, Africa, and Eastern Europe—exports are expected to grow 6% to €1.139 trillion—when GDP is only €2.37 trillion ($3.1 trillion)!

But during the financial crisis, export orders fell off a cliff…

Extreme Predictions 2012

I tend to avoid the year end retrospective/forecast blizzard, although some of the more creative compilations can be fun.

However, some 2012 forecasts crossed my screen, and two were such striking outliers that I thought I’d call them to your attention and seeing if readers have come across other Extreme Predictions for the new year (aside from the Mayan end of the world sort).

Public Money for Public Purpose: Toward the End of Plutocracy and the Triumph of Democracy – Part IV

By Dan Kervick, a PhD in Philosophy and an active independent scholar specializing in the philosophy of David Hume who also does research in decision theory and analytic metaphysics. Cross posted from New Economics Perspectives

I have set out a simplified model of a monetarily sovereign government. But near the end of the previous section, I began to suggest that the United States government is indeed a monetary sovereign by this kind. The reader might now suspect that I have yielded my rational mind over to a simplistic fiction of my own creation. And by this point, the reader is probably thinking that however interesting it might be to imagine this fictional entity, the so-called monetary sovereign, such fictions have nothing to do with the complexities of the real world, because actual governments maintain accounts that are indeed constrained by the amount of money in those accounts and by the external sources of funding to which they have access. After all, can’t a government default on its debt? What about the recent debt ceiling debate in the US? What about what is happening in Europe with the sovereign debt crisis? Also, if a government like the United States government was a monetary sovereign of the kind I have described, the consequences would seem to be enormous. Surely if a democratic government possessed this kind of power, we would make much more use of it than we do. In short, monetary sovereignty as described seems both too simple to be real and too good to be true.

These skeptical intuitions are reasonable, so they need to be addressed.

Europe Braces for Long Winter

By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.

Well, it looks like Santa finally stuck his head out of the dark cave for a look around. It is yet to be seen if he rams it straight back in again because he doesn’t like the weather, but at least he has appeared for one night.

Global Savings Glut or Global Banking Glut?

Yves here. It has been striking how little commentary a BIS paper by Claudio Borio and Piti Disyatat, “Global imbalances and the financial crisis: Link or no link?” has gotten in the econoblogosphere, at least relative to its importance.

As most readers probably know, Ben Bernanke has developed and promoted the thesis that the crisis was the result of a “global savings glut,” which is shorthand for the Chinese are to blame for the US and other countries going on a primarily housing debt party. This theory has the convenient effect of exonerating the Fed. It has more than a few wee defects.

Wolf Richter: Political Realities Threaten To Split The Eurozone

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

Nicolas Sarkozy will be the only French president since World War II with two recessions under his watch, if the forecast by the National Institute of Statistics and Economics (Insee) turns out to be correct. Recessions are rare in France: between the end of the war and the beginning of the financial crisis, there were two. Then came the four negative quarters of 2008/2009. Now, Insee forecasts another contraction: -0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2011 and -0.1% in the first quarter of 2012.

After an uptick over the summer, economic indicators have gone south.

ECB Success and Folly

By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.

Yet another interesting night in Europe. Spain managed to over sell as it latest auction with €6.03 billion sold versus €3.5 billion targeted which in the current environment is seen as a good result.

Piketty, Saez and Stantcheva: Taxing the 1% – Why the Top Tax Rate Could be Over 80%

Yves here. By happy coincidence, a mere day after Jamie Dimon offered yet another misleading defense of the 1% (among other howlers, claiming that their marginal tax rates were their effective tax rates), the gurus of income inequality, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, say there is no good case for coddling the rich. Their analysis shows that top marginal tax rates could rise to near Eisenhower administration levels (the top tax rate then was 91%) and not hurt growth.

By Thomas Piketty, Professor, Paris School of Economic, Emmanuel Saez Professor of Economics, University of California, Berkeley and Stefanie Stantcheva, PhD candidate in Economics, MIT. Cross posted from VoxEU

The top 1% of US earners now command a far higher share of the country’s income than they did 40 years ago. This column looks at 18 OECD countries and disputes the claim that low taxes on the rich raise productivity and economic growth. It says the optimal top tax rate could be over 80% and no one but the mega rich would lose out.

Eurobonds Are Likely To Increase The Risk Of Joint Defaults In The Eurozone

By Wolf Wagner, Professor of Economics, University of Tilburg. Cross posted from VoxEU

As government advisors and central bankers race through the different options to save the euro, this column argues that one such proposal, Eurobonds, will actually increase the risk that several Eurozone countries fail together. It shows using basic arithmetic that these bonds, sometimes labelled ‘stability bonds’, may actually be more likely to harm Eurozone stability.

Central Banks Plan for Possible Euro Breakup as Merkel Focuses on Wrong Issues

The denial about the existential nature of the Eurozone crisis seems to be lifting. The press has featured reports of companies and banks doing contingency planning for the possibility of a Euro dissolution or exits by some member states.

In keeping, the Wall Street Journal tonight reports that even central banks are starting to contemplate what had heretofore been unthinkable:

Has the Global Business Cycle Ended?

By David Llewellyn-Smith, the founding publisher and former editor-in-chief of The Diplomat magazine, now the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics website. He is also the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut. Cross posted from MacroBusiness

So, global PMIs for November have passed. Where do they suggest that the global economy is heading?

On the Austerity and Rule by Big Finance in Greece

This Real News Network interview nominally is about whether Greece should leave the Euro. But it is really about the struggle between the bondholders, who are crushing Greek democracy and society, versus the population. The interviewee Costas Lapavitsas makes an forceful case why defying the banks is the best route for Greek society, even thought the transition will also be difficult.

David Apgar: Could Germany Be Right about the Euro?

By David Apgar, co-founder of GoalScreen, a web app still in trials that lets investors test alternative price drivers of specific securities (free though the end of the year at www.goalscreen.com. He has been a manager at the Corporate Executive Board, McKinsey, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Lehman, and writes at www.goalscreen.com/blog.

What if there are good reasons for the preternatural calm of German Chancellor Merkel’s inner circle as the English-language media (based, after all, in the investor capitals of London and New York) light their collective hair on fire about the euro’s imminent immolation? Surprisingly, you can make a decent argument that the euro zone is at no risk of breakup – unless someone secretly switches its purpose from facilitating European trade to providing investors an implicit guarantee against losses.

Philip Pilkington: A Point of Real Interest in the Latest Fed Minutes

By Philip Pilkington, a journalist and writer living in Dublin, Ireland

JK Galbraith, remarkably, regards the Federal Reserve as a largely powerless institution; he dismisses the idea that the Fed can end a recession by cutting interest rates as a “quasi-religious conviction” that “triumphs over conflicting experience.”… Because Galbraith believes monetary policy cannot increase demand, however, he has a sort of Depression-era vision of an economy in which anything that increases spending is good… And so Galbraith is oblivious to the most serious problem facing modern liberalism: reconciling social justice with full employment.

– Paul Krugman

As the above, rather embarrassing quote from Paul Krugman’s review of JK Galbraith’s classic book The Affluent Society shows, neoclassical economists and neoclassically-trained central bankers have long been enamoured with monetary policy – and are generally angered when it subject to questioning. Why? Well, there are a variety of reasons, some of these are ideological (monetary policy doesn’t stink too badly of nasty government interference with the Holy Market), some of these are purely functional (the central bank has independent control over rates) and some simply have to do with making economists’ silly toy-models work (monetary policy gives neoclassicals a feeling of power over the economy they would otherwise lack).

Anyway, in the present crisis – just as in the great depression – monetary policy has proved completely ineffective. This has caused some – myself included – to question the real efficacy of monetary policy altogether, but it has others continuing the search for that silver bullet.