As much as I have been a consistent critic of Geithner in his role as one of the chief enablers of the banking industry, he deserves credit for this succinct remarks at the G-20 via Bloomberg (hat tip reader Scott): In a sign of tension among the world’s economic policy chiefs, Geithner flagged concern that […]
Read more...I owe readers a longer comment on this, since we may be going into crisis mode (ah, the joys of waking up and toddling out to the computer to see what wheels are falling off the global financial system today). Your humble blogger may be a bit jaded (two years of watching the crisis and […]
Read more...Brad DeLong points out that Ronald Reagan was far more concerned about unemployment than Team Obama (or Washington generally) is, and also took far more aggressive measures to combat it. From The Week (hat tip reader Marshall): By the start of 1983, labor unions were frantically giving back previously-promised wage increases and offering wage cuts […]
Read more...By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. 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. We are in the midst of severe economic and financial crises. These crises have led to reappraisals of received […]
Read more...You have to hand it to Grayson, this is a very clever way to get the issue of “why is defense spending a sacred cow” the attention it warrants.
Read more...Some commentators on the surprising and not terribly well received unilateral move by Germany to ban naked credit default swaps on sovereign debt and shorting of bank stocks assumed it was intended to placate domestic voters. Merkel’s move to join the Eurozone rescue effort was wildly unpopular at home; taking a tough line with speculators […]
Read more...Some readers and commentators have argued that the EU should not have bailed out Greece, but instead should have restructured its debt. The logic is that Greece is a goner; there is no way it can meet its existing obligations, and a bailout serves to throw good money after bad. Better to engage in triage […]
Read more...By Jan Kregel, former professor of economics at Università degli Studi di Bologna and Johns Hopkins,m and currently a senior scholar at The Levy Economics Institute and Rob Parenteau, CFA, sole proprietor of MacroStrategy Edge, editor of The Richebacher Letter, and a research associate of The Levy Economics Institute A week ago eurocrats launched their […]
Read more...Be careful about your cultural stereotypes! From Bloomberg, via Marshall and Andrew: Update: Hah! I missed a post from Mark Thoma that also shows that Greeks work more hours than Germans, a LOT more.
Read more...Most of the major figures in the financial crisis have had an “insert foot in mouth and chew” moment, although none have yet proven as memorable as Irving Fisher’s “Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.” less than a week before the Great Crash of 1929 commenced. Bernanke’s was his March […]
Read more...I would imagine that some EU policymakers are not happy right now. We’ve put up links in Links from various European media outlets yesterday and today which describe the unusual lengths (by modern geopolitical standards) that Obama took to push Eurozone leaders to agree on a bailout package last weekend. Obama reportedly depicted the financial […]
Read more...Edward Harrison here with a Modern Monetary Theory-inspired post. Econ 101 Imagine you and I are the only two people in an economy. For the sake of argument, say we use sea shells as a currency and we trade with no one else but each other. So when we do trade, we exchange goods and […]
Read more...By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. 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 EU, IMF and friends have rolled out the shock-and-awe bailout package for Greece and the Euro. This package […]
Read more...Tom Ferguson, professor of political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is in fine form here. Enjoy!
Read more...The EU announced a €750 billion salvage operation, funds to shore up economies in economic difficulty, with the program consisting of €440 billion of loans from eurozone nations, €60 billion from an EU emergency fund, and €250 billion from the IMF. There are several layers of complicating factors, however. The first is that the German […]
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