Category Archives: Macroeconomic policy

Germany’s Short Selling Bans: Prudence, Populism or Bank Protection?

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 […]

Should Greece Follow Argentina’s Playbook?

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 […]

Kregel/Parenteau: No Sidestepping the Eurozone Implosion?

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 […]

German Households Owe More Than Greece’s Do

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.

Geithner on Europe: “Subprime is Contained” Redux?

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 […]

Volcker Talks of Possible EU Breakup (Loose Lips Sink Ships Edition)

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 […]

MMT: The accounting of government budget deficits

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 […]

Alford: EU Shock and Awe Violates Powell Doctrine

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 […]

US Retirement Benefits to be Cut?

Tom Ferguson, professor of political science professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is in fine form here. Enjoy!

Is the Eurozone Shock and Awe Enough? (Updated)

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 […]

EU to Defend the Euro

The only moderate reduction in market havoc on Friday has all eyes on the European officialdom. Will they mount a credible enough plan over the weekend to buy them a bit of breathing room so they can come up a better salvage operation for the euro experiment? The odds are against both steps in the […]

Auerback: Yes, Virginia. There is a Difference Between Greece and the US

By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist who writes for New Deal 2.0. Many market analysts, commentators and economists claim to be having a hard time finding a metric in which the US is in better financial shape than Greece. Ken Rogoff, for example, recently warned that a Greek default would usher in […]

Greece, Germany, and the Dangers of Beggar Thy Neighbor

Investors continued their flight from risky assets as the wobbling Greek rescue looked ready to morph into a broader sovereign debt crisis, compounded by fears that a China’s expansion, once seen as inevitable and enduring, is now looking at risk of fading as the officialdom tries to dampen inflation. But the focus on the Greece […]

Auerback/Mosler: Greece CAN Go it Alone

By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist and Warren Mosler, a fund manager and co-founder and Distinguished Research Associate of The Center for Full Employment And Price Stability at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. Greece can successfully issue and place new debt at low interest rates. The trick is to insert […]