Economische aanraders: Veren of Lood biedt u op zondag wekelijks een inkijkje in (minstens) 10 belangrijke of informatieve artikelen en interviews die de voorafgaande 7 dagen op economisch terrein verschenen op onafhankelijke sites.

De kop is de link naar het oorspronkelijke artikel, waarvan de samenvatting of de eerste (twee) alinea’s hier gegeven worden.

Sinds december 2015 nemen we ook een paar extra links op naar artikelen die minder specialistische kennis vereisen. Deze met *** gemerkte artikelen zijn ons inziens ook interessant voor lezers met weinig basiskennis van economie.
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China’s WTO entry benefits US consumers – Mary Amiti, Mi Dai, Robert Feenstra, John Romalis
28 juni
China has become the world’s largest exporter, with a rapid rise in its world trade share just after it joined the WTO in 2001. This column finds that China’s WTO entry reduced the US manufacturing price index by 7.6% between 2000 and 2006, with most of this effect arising from China reducing its own import tariffs. US consumers gained because they paid less for manufactured goods and because they had access to more varieties of goods.
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***China Suffers “Delusion” like 1980s Japan, Faces Long Stagnation – Wolf Richter
27 juni
Sudden Financial Meltdown is less likely.
The Chinese government has the situation under control and will do whatever it takes to keep it under control — that’s in essence what Premier Li Keqiang said today in a speech at the World Economic Forum in the Chinese city of Dalian.
“We are fully capable of achieving the main economic targets for the full year,” Li said. The mandated growth rate this year is 6.5%.
“Currently, China also faces many difficulties and challenges, but we are fully prepared,” he said, according to Reuters. He said this because everyone from the IMF and the New York Fed on down has been pointing at and fretting about the debt powder keg that China keeps filling with ever more volatile compounds.
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On the measuring and mis-measuring of Chinese growth – Hunter Clark, Maxim Pinkovskiy, Xavier Sala-i-Martin
1 juli
Unofficial indicators of Chinese GDP often suggest that Beijing’s growth figures are exaggerated. This column uses nighttime light as a proxy to estimate Chinese GDP growth. Since 2012, the authors’ estimate is never appreciably lower, and is in many years higher, than the GDP growth rate reported in the official statistics. While not ruling out the risk of future turmoil, the analysis presents few immediate indications that Chinese growth is being systematically overestimated.
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Jim Chanos: U.S. Economy is Worse Than You Think – Lynn Parramore
30 juni
The famed short-seller offers a mid-2017 reality check for “fake fiscal news,” economic pipe dreams, and “portents of even worse things”
Since the election of Donald Trump, the stock market has soared and many pundits have noted positive economic trends in the US. Jim Chanos of Kynikos Associates, known for his financial prescience, is less sanguine. He sat down with INET’s Lynn Parramore to discuss the underlying components of the economy, in which he finds several areas of concern. Chanos is a member of INET’s Global Partners Council.
Lynn Parramore: Let’s talk about perceptions of the U.S. economy. You’ve pointed out that surveys asking how people feel about the economy show optimism, while actual hard numbers look disappointing. What do you make of this gap?
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Globalisation: The hype, the reality, and the causes of the recent slowdown in global trade – Daniel Gros
30 juni
Trade liberalisation has been a significant driver of globalisation over the past half century, but global trade has slowed in recent years. This column argues that globalisation can also be driven by higher commodity prices, as commodities constitute a large fraction of global trade. This is reflected in trade volumes and commodity prices, which increased until around 2014 but have fallen since. Commodity price-driven globalisation implies lower living standards in advanced countries, as the higher commodity prices diminish the purchasing power of workers.
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No, Mark Carney, Brexit Didn’t Cause Inflation — You Did – George Pickering
29 juni
For the past several weeks, a dark and uneasy atmosphere has been hanging heavily over the British political landscape. In addition to the four major terrorist attacks on British soil since March, the 2017 general election highlighted growing public anger with the complacent, non-ideological, and seemingly uncontested reign of Prime Minister Theresa May. Not only has May all but purged libertarian and free market ideas from the Conservative Party, but she also conducted one of the most staggeringly inept election campaigns in recent memory, with a series of policy announcements directly before the election which were wildly unpopular, strategically insane, and practically worthless in the face of the country’s major problems. All this led to an election where, had the various progressive parties gained just 6,379 additional votes overall, the most extreme far-left Labour Party in a generation would have been able to form a new coalition government. This would have left Britain with a prime minister who has publicly defended the failing socialist policies of Venezuela and referred to the terrorist group Hezbollah as his “friends.”
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Many European Banks Would Collapse Without Regulators’ Help: Fitch – Don Quijones
1 juli
Only two things keep these banks alive: “a State willing to support them and a regulator that does not declare them insolvent.”
Dozens of Greek, Italian, Spanish and even German lenders have volumes of troubled assets higher or similar to that of Spain’s fallen lender Banco Popular. They, too, are at risk of insolvency. This stark observation came from Bridget Gandy, director of financial institutions for Fitch Ratings, who spoke at a conference in London on Thursday.
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Banks Begin To Mutiny Against The Fed: “If We Are Right, Central Banks Will Be Wrong” – Tyler Durden
1 juli
It has been a trying time for the world’s central bankers, who for decades have been used to the “high finance” community’s adulation, derived from the deliverance of policy wrapped in so much opacity, gibberish and contradictions, that neither the central bankers, nor the markets, had any idea what was going on (see the Greenspan tenure), or dared to admit it was all meaningless drivel, resulting in phases during which the market was on “autopilot” and culminating with a bubble and subsequent crash, “rescued” by an even greater asset bubble and even greater crash, etc.
However, after generations of largely uncontested and unquestioned monetary policy where only the occasional “tinfoil” fringe blog dared to say that central banker emperors are not only naked and clueless but are also the cause of the world’s biggest problems, more and more voices are emerging to both challenge the prevailing monetary religious dogma, as well as daring to do something unprecedented: tell the truth.
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Automation and jobs – John H. Cochrane
1 juli
I am often asked to opine about whether automation will destroy all the jobs. Yes, we talk about tractors, which brought farm employment from something like 70% of the country at the beginning of the 20th century to about 3% today. And cars, which put the horse drivers out of business. And trains, which put the canal boats out of business.
A more recent case occurred to me. This is what offices looked like in the 1950s and 1960s:
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America’s Pension Bomb: Illinois Is Just the Start – Tyler Durden
1 juli
We’ve written quite a bit over the past couple of months about the pending financial crisis in Illinois which will inevitability result in the state’s debt being downgraded to “junk” at some point in the near future (here is our latest from just this morning: “From Horrific To Catastrophic”: Court Ruling Sends Illinois Into Financial Abyss).
Unfortunately, the state of Illinois doesn’t have a monopoly on ignorant politicians…they’re everywhere. And, since the end of World War II, those ignorant politicians have been promising American Baby Boomers more and more entitlements while never collecting nearly enough money to cover them all…it’s all been a massive state-sponsored scam.
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Yes, the Fed Really Is Holding Down Interest Rates – Joseph T. Salerno
26 juni
The very sluggish recovery of the economy since the financial crisis — despite zero and near zero interest rates — presents the dominant school of New Keynesian macroeconomists with a conundrum. Many have attempted to resolve the riddle by arguing that such unprecedentedly low interest rates are not the doing of the Fed and therefore do not indicate an expansionary monetary policy. Although not formally a New Keynesian, George Selgin has taken up and vigorously defended this position. According to Selgin, the view that interest rates have been “held down” by “the Fed’s easy money policies” is based on a “myth.” “The unvarnished truth,” according to Selgin, “is that interest rates have been low since the last months of 2008, not because the Fed has deliberately kept them so, but in large part owing to its misguided attempt, back in 2008, to keep them from falling in the first place.” Indeed, in Selgin’s view, the Fed’s monetary policy actually has been “too tight” since 2008.
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Exchange rates and the Swiss economy – Willem Thorbecke, Atsuyuki Kato
1 juli
Since 2007, there have been large changes in the Swiss franc. This column shows that exchange-rate appreciations do not affect the exports, profits, or stock returns of Swiss companies making sophisticated products. In contrast, rises in the franc decrease the exports, profits and stock returns of firms producing medium-high-technology goods. An economy’s production structure is important for weathering exchange-rate fluctuations.
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Markets Dancing to the QE Two-Step…Is the Music About to Stop? – Chris Hamilton
30 juni
Just a quick thought about what is driving the US stock market. The chart below shows the Wilshire 5000 (representing all publicly traded US equities in red), the Federal Reserve balance sheet (black), and excess reserves held at the Federal Reserve Bank by the largest of private(?) banks (likely a majority of these reserves held by foreign banks). What you may notice is the rise in equities since ’09 correlating with the rise in the Federal Reserves balance sheet until QE ended. Then a momentary pause in equities during 2015, and another strong leg higher since. That strong leg higher correlates nicely to the drawdown in the excess reserves held at the FRB, particularly since 2016.
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***Myths Behind the War on Cash – Ronald-Peter Stöferle
28 juni
The attacks on physical cash from a phalanx of economists, central bankers, commercial banks, and politicians have not diminished in recent years. On the contrary, in the face of the worldwide increase in terror attacks, particularly in Europe, and ongoing pressure on public budgets, the cash ban issue is increasingly dragged into the spotlight.
In a highly-recommended study entitled “Cash, Freedom and Crime. Use and Impact of Cash in a World Going Digital,” Deutsche Bank Research demolishes numerous popular myths surrounding cash, inter alia in the context of crime and terrorism. Without cash there are no longer bank robberies at gun point, instead there are now electronic bank robberies. Fraud involving credit cards and ATM cards is massively increasing in Sweden, the country considered the pioneer of the cashless society. The argument that adopting a cashless payment system would facilitate the fight against terrorism doesn’t hold water either:
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Acquiring bank networks – Ross Levine, Chen Lin, Zigan Wang
26 juni
While the causes and consequences of mergers have received a lot of scholarly attention, geographic factors have thus far been neglected. Using US data, this column argues that greater geographic overlap of the subsidiaries and branches of two bank holding companies increases the likelihood of the two merging, and also boosts the cumulative abnormal returns of the acquirer, target, and merged companies. It also discusses how network overlap can affect synergies and value creation.
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***If We Don’t Change the Way Money Is Created, Rising Inequality and Social Disorder Are Inevitable – Charles Hugh Smith
27 juni
Centrally issued money optimizes inequality, monopoly, cronyism, stagnation and systemic instability.
Everyone who wants to reduce wealth and income inequality with more regulations and taxes is missing the key dynamic: central banks’ monopoly on creating and issuing money widens wealth inequality, as those with access to newly issued money can always outbid the rest of us to buy the engines of wealth creation.
History informs us that rising wealth and income inequality generate social disorder.
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Greece’s sovereign debt and economic realism – Jeremy Bulow, John Geanakoplos
30 juni
After another six months of discussions, Greek debt negotiations succeeded in once again kicking the can down the road. This column analyses how sophisticated and experienced negotiators like the IMF, the Eurozone leadership, and by now even the Greeks, could have let negotiations drag out for so many years, and goes on to propose a plan which might be just radical enough to meet the needs of all parties.
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Time to Cash Out of the Banking System? – Joseph T. Salerno
27 juni
Uh-oh. Chairman Yellen assured us today that she does not believe that there will be another financial crisis “in our lifetimes.”
You may recall another perfectly timed assurance by a high-powered economist:
The stability of the economy is greater than it has ever been in our history. We really are in remarkable shape. … The United States is at the peak of its performance in its history. There has never been a time in the United States when we have had the state of prosperity, its level and its spread, that we have had in the last ten or fifteen years. … It’s unprecedented. I certainly do [give credit to Alan Greenspan for that]. I think monetary policy is primarily responsible for it (Milton Friedman, Charlie Rose Interview, December 26 2005).
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W. Arthur Lewis and the tradeoffs of economics and economists – Ravi Kanbur
25 juni
Political economy discourses in areas such as the nature of market failure, the case for government intervention on grounds of efficiency and equity, and the interplay between economic and political forces have run for generations. This column provides an overview of the life of Nobel Prize-winning economist W Arthur Lewis, who was a critic of laissez-faire economic policies, but who also acted as a check on extreme statist interventions, arguing against heavy state subsidy to industry on purely economic grounds.
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Disclaimer: De VoL-redactie selecteert deze artikelen op interessante inzichten, of naar wij denken nuttige informatie. Wij kunnen echter geen enkele aansprakelijkheid aanvaarden voor de gevolgen van beslissingen die op grond hiervan door lezers zijn genomen, zakelijk zomin als privé.