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 zijn.

Sinds begin 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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The Incredible Shrinking Benefits Of Massive Japanese Money Printing – Michael Cembalest
2 januari
Excerpted from JPMorgan CIO Michael Cembalest 2016 Outlook:
Something is wrong with this picture. In the US and Japan, corporate profits sank during the global financial crisis. In the US, the profit recovery was accompanied by a recovery in household income. In Japan, however, corporate profits and household income moved in opposite directions, as dynamics that helped profits recover did not help consumers.
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Secret Data – John Cochrane
28 december
On replication in economics. Just in time for bar-room discussions at the annual meetings.
“I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.” -Fermat
“I have a truly marvelous regression result, but I can’t show you the data and won’t even show you the computer program that produced the result” – Typical paper in economics and finance.
The problem
Science demands transparency. Yet much research in economics and finance uses secret data. The journals publish results and conclusions, but the data and sometimes even the programs are not available for review or inspection. Replication, even just checking what the author(s) did given their data, is getting harder.
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Well-Paid Pandering Pundits and the Fantasy of Reform – Charles Hugh Smith
31 december
Any serious reform has to start with the dissolution of the existing political parties and the Federal Reserve. Anything less is self-serving, pandering fantasy.
Well-paid econo-pundit Joseph Stiglitz has a new book that repeats the usual pandering fantasy that “reform” can fix what’s broken with the U.S. economy: Rewriting the Rules of the American Economy: An Agenda for Growth and Shared Prosperity.
Stiglitz has penned an economist’s equivalent of round up the usual suspects: if only we limit rentier skims, too big to fail banks and “democracy” auctioned off to the highest bidder, everything will be peachy: debt-serfs’ wages will magically soar and all the inequalities in our society and economy will magically disappear.
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Preferential regulatory treatment and banks’ demand for government bonds – Clemens Bonner
3 januari
Economists continue to debate whether preferential treatment in financial regulation increases banks’ demand for government bonds. This column looks at bank purchases of government bonds and other types of bonds when constrained by a capital or liquidity requirement. Financial regulation seems to be a main driver of banks’ demand. If regulators wish to break the vicious circle from weak banks to weak governments, revising financial regulation seems to be a good starting point.
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*** What Secret Do Global Banks Know about Chinese Banks? – Wolf Richter
29 december
“Now is the right time for us to sell this investment,” announced Deutsche Bank’s newish co-CEO John Cryan on Monday after the long Christmas weekend when no one was supposed to pay attention.
It was how Cryan justified the deal to sell Deutsche’s entire 19.99% stake in Hua Xia Bank in China to Chinese insurer PICC Property and Casualty. He couched the deal in terms of executing Deutsche’s “strategic agenda”: boosting capital ratios to prop up the balance sheet.
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What Does The Future Hold For Negative Rates In Europe? Goldman Answers – Allison Nathan
2 januari
Official interest rates have fallen further in the Euro area and Sweden. The European Central Bank (ECB) lowered its deposit facility rate 10bp to -0.30% on December 3, pushing beyond levels previously described by Mario Draghi as the bank’s lower bound. The latest ECB measures fell short of market expectations, likely reducing the pressure for neighboring central banks to add stimulus; the Swiss National Bank (SNB) and Riksbank have subsequently been on hold.
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The case for contingent convertible debt for sovereigns – Andrea Consiglio, Stavros A. Zenios
2 januari
Contingent debt has been gaining ground as a tool for banking stability. This column argues for the advantages of sovereign debt with a contingent payment standstill. Sovereign contingent debt would have instigated early responses for Eurozone crisis countries ranging from a couple of months (Ireland) to almost two years (Cyprus). Pricing simulations illustrate how this financial innovation creates appropriate incentives for sovereigns and addresses creditor moral hazard. Using contingent debt for Greece we illustrate that the country’s debt profile can improve significantly.
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Will 2016 Be the End of the Current Skyscraper Boom? – Mark Thornton
1 januari
With more financing in place, the world’s tallest skyscraper is moving forward.
Recent media reports indicate that the final segment of financing has been obtained for the $1.2 billion Jeddah Tower project in Saudi Arabia. This is the financing that would be necessary to bring the project to record heights. Media reports also show that the structure has risen to more than seventy-five meters (246 feet) and construction is proceeding at an uninterrupted pace.
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The Risks of the War on Cash – Don Quijones
2 januari
On January 1st, Londoners woke up to a rather perplexing reality: all of the cashless Oyster card readers on the city’s buses, rail and tube stations had stopped working. With cash as good as banished from the London transport system, attendants had little choice but to wave passengers through open ticket barriers and onto buses without paying, until the problem was fixed.
Serious Pause for Thought
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*** A Year of Sovereign Defaults?– Carmen Reinhart
31 december
When it comes to sovereign debt, the term “default” is often misunderstood. It almost never entails the complete and permanent repudiation of the entire stock of debt; indeed, even some Czarist-era Russian bonds were eventually (if only partly) repaid after the 1917 revolution. Rather, non-payment – a “default,” according to credit-rating agencies, when it involves private creditors – typically spurs a conversation about debt restructuring, which can involve maturity extensions, coupon-payment cuts, grace periods, or face-value reductions (so-called “haircuts”).

If history is a guide, such conversations may be happening a lot in 2016.
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This Is What Stocks Do During Hyperinflation – Tyler Durden
31 december
One of the classical refrains for buying stocks is that they preserve purchasing power and add value, even under such extreme monetary conditions as hyperinflation, or in other words, on a relative basis, local equities when denominated in a stable currency, will increase in value even as the local currency disintegrates.
As one example of this phenomenon, historians and equity bulls provide the widely referenced example showing that during the Weimar period, even as the mark lost all of its value, the stock market in USD terms actually rose during the parabolic phase.
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A “witch’s brew” Bubbling in bond ETFs – Financial Repression Authority Macroprudential Policy Advisors
1 januari
We believe the Credit Cycle has turned and with it will come some massive unexpected shocks. One of these will be the fall out in the Bond Market, centered around the dramatic growth explosion in Bond ETFs coupled with the post financial crisis regulatory changes that effectively removed banks from making markets in corporate bonds. It is a ‘Witch’s Brew’ with a flattening yield curve bringing it to a boil.
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Yellen, You Have A Problem: The “Rate Hike Corridor” Just Broke – Tyler Durden
31 december
One week before the Fed hiked rates by 25 bps we warned that “nobody knows if the Fed can actually do it”, citing not only our previous post on the topic, explaining the lack of a detailed framework by the Fed on the mechanics of the rate hike, but also a Bloomberg piece in which we noted the broader logistical concern: “with so much cash sloshing around, will Fed officials be able to nudge rates as high as they want? Will the new-fangled tools they’ve created to engineer the move work, or instead sow the kind of confusion that can dent the Fed’s credibility and spur a broader market selloff?”
The good news, at least initially, was that the Fed’s plumbing worked smoothly, and instead of the Fed draining up to the $1 trillion in excess liquidity some such as Citi had predicted, the very first fixed-rate reverse repo operation saw just $105 billion in liquidity soaked up by the Fed from 49 counterparties.
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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.