Category Archives: The dismal science

Marshall Auerback: What Happens if Germany Exits the Euro?

By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist, hedge fund manager, and Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow. Like marriage, membership in the euro zone is supposed to be a lifetime commitment, “for better or for worse”. But as we know, divorces do occur, even if the marriage was entered into with the best of intentions. And the recent […]

Barry Eichengreen: Ireland’s rescue package – Disaster for Ireland, bad omen for the Eurozone

By Barry Eichengreen, Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley; and formerly Senior Policy Advisor at the International Monetary Fund. Cross posted from VoxEU Irish interest spreads did not fall and contagion continues. Here one of the world’s leading international economists explains why. Short-sighted, wishful thinking by EU and German […]

More on the Damaging Implications of Corporate Cash-Hoarding

John Authers of the Financial Times provides an update on corporate cash-hoarding. In brief, it’s getting worse due to probably-warranted executive nervousness about business prospects. As Authers puts it: Corporate chieftains the world over have lots of cash, and want to hold on to it. It is a critical symptom of a new Age of […]

Guest Post: A recession to remember – Lessons from the US, 1937–1938

Yves here. Normally I put up cross posts without additional commentary, but I wanted to offer a couple of observations about this post. While this piece is admittedly a bit heavy on economist-speak, and readers may differ with the policy recommendations, = it gives an even-handed account of the early rebound during the Great Depression […]

Chomsky Calls ECONNED “Great”

From an interview of Noam Chomsky by Keane Bhatt, “Chomsky: ‘The Business Elites … Are Instinctive Marxists’” in TruthOut. The funny bit is I was reading this piece (per referral by reader May S) and found this section in it: KB: In characterizing the U.S. financial crisis, you say that “markets are inefficient … They […]

Alford: The Fed Tests The Thesis That Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right, But Three Do

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. In reaction to the OPEC-engineered oil price spikes of the 1970s, which economists would depict as external negative supply […]

Auerback: Amateur Hour at the Federal Reserve

By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and Roosevelt Institute Fellow As any student of Economics 101 realises, you can control the price of something, or the quantity, but not both simultaneously. In announcing its decision to purchase an additional $600bn of treasuries last week, the Federal Reserve presumably intended to create additional stimulus to an […]

Costello: On Trade

By Joe Costello, former communications director for Jerry Brown’s 1992 presidential campaign and senior adviser for Howard Dean’s effort in 2004; first posted at Archein “You going to liberate us girls from male, white, corporate oppression?” Tell em like it is, Fear of a Female Planet Fear baby Let everybody know — Sonic Youth When […]

Bernanke Versus Pimco’s Mohamed El-Erian on QE2

Not only did the Fed announce its controversial $600 billion QE2 program today, but Ben Bernanke felt compelled to defend it in a Washington Post op-ed tonight. For the normally oracular Fed to feel it has to sell its program in a non-financial media outlet says Bernanke must recognize that he is staking on thin […]

Guest Post: Currency Wars and Emerging Markets

By Richard Portes, Professor of Economics at London Business School and President of CEPR, first posted at VoxEU The threat of a currency war between the US and China is one of the main concerns for the G20 ahead of this month’s meeting in Seoul. This column say that while policymakers appear to grasp some […]

Is the US Taking Too Much of the Brunt of the Crisis Aftermath?

Before readers throw brickbats at me, I’m just acting as the messenger for two articles, one by Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff, the other by the Financial Times’ Martin Wolf. Each points out that the US is taking a proportionately bigger hit than other big economies post crisis, particularly in terms of unemployment. And this is actually […]

Auerback: On McArdle’s Fuzzy Deficit Accounting

By Marshall Auerback, a portfolio strategist and Roosevelt Institute fellow There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize Barack Obama’s dismal stewardship of the US economy, and God knows I’ve voiced quite a few of them, but it does not follow that every criticism made of his economic policies is therefore legitimate. There is quite […]

Tom Ferguson: Obama’s Economic Policies Failed

Tom Ferguson, who is refreshingly blunt, gives his dim view of the Obama Administration economic policies. But be warned, he doesn’t like the Republican proposals either. From the Real News Network: More at The Real News