The financial media is all atwitter (no pun intended) over the Bank of International Settlement’s just released annual report, since it shook a stern finger at central banks for keeping super low interest rates and warned them about the difficulty of renormalizing without kicking up a lot of upheaval.
Read more...Joel Rogers, a professor of law and sociology at the University of Wisconsin, calls it “the most important labor law case the court has considered in decades.”
Remember! “Sanctity of contract” never applies if you’re a worker!
Read more...The Financial Times has an article on how corporate bond dealers are going to create a new trading hub to try to preserve their market position while “boosting liquidity” in the market. Narrowly speaking, there’s nothing wrong with the piece as a description of investor unhappiness and planned bank responses. But it curiously missed how Fed policy has helped generate conditions that are reducing corporate bond market liquidity.
Read more...This weekend, former Treasury secretary Hank Paulson weighed in at the New York Times abouyt the need for more urgent action on the climate front, and described how various indicators of how quickly climate change is taking place, such as the speed of Arctic and Antarctic ice melt, are moving much faster than models had predicted.
Paulson, who has long been an ardent conservationist (and in contrast to his alpha Wall Street male standing, lives modestly), made a forceful pitch for carbon taxes. The irony of this proposal is that we have a Republican showing what a right-winger Obama really is.
Read more...The document that Wikileaks exposed on Thursday is a portion of the financial services section. It is clearly designed to serve the pet interests of big international players. This agreement is designed to institutionalize the current level of deregulation as a baseline and facilitate the introduction of new products, further ease the movement of funds, data, and key personnel, and facilitate cross-border acquisitions and other forms of market entry.
Read more...Yves here. It’s been astonishing to see members of the Fed in denial about their own handiwork, so when St. Louis Fed President James Bullard berates his fellow central bankers for their abject refusal to notice pre-crisis bubbles, it’s an all too rare departure from their usual insularity and willful blindness.
Read more...French economist Thomas Piketty has written a scholarly tome with the humdrum title, Capital in the 21st Century. The book has become an overnight sensation because Piketty documents an inherent tendency for ever-increasing inequality of income and wealth in capitalist economic systems. It is not an accident, he says, that many will be left behind even as others become richer. The book taps into a collective anxiety, coming as it does amidst the lingering after-effects of the global crisis and slowing global growth.
India’s capitalist dynamic — as in other emerging economies — is different from that in the richer countries that Piketty focuses on. Yet, the lessons Piketty offers should ring a cautionary bell. Indeed, even more so than in the rich countries, India could find itself in a low growth, high inequality and high insecurity trap. These are the real fears that bubble under the theatrics and ugliness of the ongoing political debate.
Read more...The recent European elections were a decisive victory for the right, and the craven, co-opted left has no one but itself to blame.
Read more...David Cay Johnston is a clear and lively conversationalist, and I anticipate readers will enjoy his discussion of his work over the last 20 years on inequality.
Read more...SEC chairman Mary Jo White made clear in a new speech that she’s not going to do much about high frequency trading.
SEC chairman Mary Jo White spoke on Thursday about high frequency trading. She made clear that she not going to do much to curb it but will engage in more studies so as to look to be Doing Something.
Read more...How the Fed has gotten itself caught in its own underwear by ignoring Hyman Minsky and in persisting in the clearly failed strategy of super lax monetary policy rather than calling for more government spending.
Read more...Despite the alarming results of the European elections last week, Angela Merkel remained unflinching. That is a cause for concern. European politicians believe the solution to voter ire is better messaging, as opposed to a change in policy.
Read more...Spain’s conservative government, eager to change the media’s emphasis on its repudiation in recent EU elections, has launched a media campaign stressing its adoption of an aggressive “stimulus” program. But once you get past the hype, this new program is the same old failed austerity snake oil.
Read more...The US press and newscasts make it appear that Europeans have voted against poor immigrants and foreigners. What they voted against was the super-rich, the oligarchy.
Read more...How the Vietnam War helped usher in neoliberalism, financialization of the economy, and the use of military spending as stealth stimulus.
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