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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Capital Flight in Eurozone Continues – Mish
1 april
Capital flight from one Eurozone country to another, continues to rise. That capital flight is a measure of trust of of a nation’s banks.
Capital flight is ongoing in Spain, Italy, Greece, France, and Portugal in that order. The recipient countries are Germany, Luxembourg, Finland, and the Netherlands in that order.
Some charts and tables will help provide a clear picture.
Data for the following charts and tables is from ECB Target Balances, a measure of capital flight. Neither the ECB nor Eurozone officials likes to discuss these numbers for obvious reasons.
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Think the Market Will Reach a New High? Here’s Why We Don’t – Harry Dent
1 april
Stocks are once again rallying after another “mini crash” at the start of the year. We’ve had three of these things since October 2014 without much to show for it. Stocks have basically gone nowhere for a year and a half.
After the first crash in late 2014, stocks were able to eke out a new high into May of last year. But since then, stocks have failed to make new highs despite strong attempts like this one. Ten months without a new high.
That’s only happened at 11 other points in history. And in eight of those instances, we saw a new bear market follow. That’s almost 75%! Even after the 20% correction in 2011, the only major correction in this bubble since March of 2009, stocks hit new highs within 10 months. We’re moving into dangerous territory here.
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*** Price Controls May Be On the Way – Paul-Martin Foss
29 maart
If you thought negative interest rates were as bad as it could get with central banks, you might be in for a surprise. Central banks have been so spectacularly unsuccessful with their accommodative monetary policies that they are discussing pulling out all the stops to get the results they want. They fail to realize that the reason prices aren’t rising is because they really want and need to fall. Bad debts weren’t liquidated during the last financial crisis, the debtors were merely bailed out. Overpriced assets weren’t allowed to be reduced in price. Central banks pumped trillions of dollars into the economy to attempt to paper over the recession. Market forces want to drive prices down, while central banks attempt to prop them up. So what to do when central banks aren’t getting their way?
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The US is beginning to dominate global investment banking: Implications for Europe – Charles A.E. Goodhart, Dirk Schoenmaker
28 maart
The European banking system is downsizing. As a consequence, the big US investment banks are on the rise in Europe. This column argues that US investment banks are about to surpass their European counterparts in the European investment banking market. The authors also discuss why leaving global investment banking to the big five American banks might be problematic and offer policy response recommendations.
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“Are We Prepared to Impose Temporary Debt Standstills?” – Don Quijjones
31 maart
In a remarkable turnaround, foreign investors are estimated to have pumped over $35 billion into emerging market (EM) stocks and bonds in March, the highest monthly inflow in nearly two years, according to the Institute of International Finance. One of the biggest beneficiaries is Latin America, which for months had been shunned by investors. The region took in $13.4 billion, with equities in even crisis-hit Brazil receiving over $2 billion.
But is this the beginning of an enduring rally or is this “hot money,” which can change direction without notice, about to get cold feet again?
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Good booms, bad booms: Why only some credit booms end in a crisis – Gary B. Gorton, Guillermo L. Ordoñez
27 maart
Credit booms are not rare and usually precede financial crises. However, some end in a crisis while others do not. This column argues that credit booms start with an increase in productivity, which subsequently falls much faster during ‘bad booms’. When this decline is severe enough, it changes the informational regime in credit markets, leading to a drying up of credit. A crisis may be the result of an exhausted credit boom and not necessarily of a negative productivity shock.
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Neo-Fisherian caveats – John H. Cochrane
31 maart
Raise interest rates to raise inflation? Lower interest rates to lower inflation? It’s not that simple.
A correspondent from an emerging market wrote enthusiastically. His country has somewhat too high inflation, currency depreciation and slightly negative real rates. A discussion is going on about raising rates to combat inflation. Do I think that lowering rates in this circumstance is instead the way to go about it?
As you can tell, posing the question this way makes me very uncomfortable! So, thinking out loud, why might one pause at jumping this far, this fast?
Fiscal policy. Fiscal policy deeply underlies monetary policy. In my own “Fisherian” explorations, the fiscal theory of price level is a deep foundation. If the government is printing up money to pay its bills, the central bank can do what it wants with interest rates, inflation is coming anyway.
Zie hierover ook: A very simple neo-Fisherian model
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Another Reason Corporate Profits Will Plummet: The Managerial/ Professional Class Is Burning Out – Charles Hugh Smith
28 maart
What no financial analyst dares confess is the corporate profits they cheer every quarter have come at a cost that many Americans will soon be unable to bear.
If you work for Corporate America in a managerial or professional capacity, you know all about burnout, because you see it all around you or are experiencing it yourself. Readers describe what they are seeing in the top ranks of S&P 500 corporations, and the stories (anonymous because everyone knows the truth will get them fired/blacklisted) are all about the high personal costs of earning big paychecks by making the numbers–not just revenue but the all-important profits that power the multi-trillion-dollar valuations of U.S. corporations and the stock market that glories in their magnificent and ever-growing profits.
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Deflation Welcome! Lower Third of Population Goes Deeper in Debt, Cannot Afford Any Price Increases – Mish
3o maart
A new PEW study on Household Incomes and Expenditures goes a long ways towards explaining why economists who expected a big jump in consumer spending based on falling gasoline prices were dead wrong.
The study shows that although expenditures recovered from the downturn, income did not.
Also, low-income families spent a far greater share of their income on core needs, such as housing, transportation, and food, than did upper-income families. Households in the lower third spent 40 percent of their income on housing, while renters in that third spent nearly half of their income on housing, as of 2014.
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***First Ocean Freight Rates Collapse to “Zero,” China Freight Index Plunges to Record Low, Bailouts Loom – Wolf Richter
28 maart
The amount it costs to ship containers from China to ports around the world has plunged to historic lows. As container carriers are sinking deeper into trouble, whipped by lackluster global demand and rampant oversupply of container ships, they’re escalating a brutal price war with absurd consequences.
Maritime research and advisory firm Drewry (emphasis mine):
Recent news stories, backed up by anecdotal stories told to Drewry, report that carriers have quoted zero dollar freight rates to some forwarders on certain lanes out of Asia. Whether these are merely isolated cases or something more widespread is difficult to judge at the present time, but whatever the exact quantum, there is no denying the container rates are now close to the historic lows as seen in 2009.
The World Container Index, an average of spot freight rates on 11 global East-West routes connecting Asia, Europe, and the US, plunged last week to a record low of $666 per 40-foot equivalent unit container (FEU), down 73% from mid-2012!
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Public debt in low-income countries: Risks and opportunities – Alex Pienkowski, Joyce Miharu Saito, Suchanan Tambunlertchai
28 maart
Initiatives to reduce public debt in low-income countries have made substantial progress over the past decade, but challenges remain and continue to evolve. This column presents the findings from a new IMF-World Bank report on these developments. Low-income countries have benefited from debt relief and favourable economic conditions, resulting in generally lower debt burdens and vulnerabilities. There has also been a shift in debt financing, with greater reliance on emerging market economies, international capital markets, and domestic sources. However, more recently, risks have begun to re-emerge necessitating fiscal prudence and improved debt management.
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Economics: It’s Simpler Than You Think – David Gordon
30 maart
In the view of John Tamny — an editor at Forbes and RealClearMarkets — economics as it is usually studied and taught in universities is unnecessarily complicated. The basic truths of economics are simple and require no difficult mathematics to understand. Readers will be reminded of Hazlitt’s great Economics in One Lesson.
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Learning entrepreneurship from other entrepreneurs: Evidence from Italy – Luigi Guiso, Luigi Pistaferri, Fabiano Schivardi
3 april
Entrepreneurship often concentrates in certain geographic locations, with Silicon Valley the most famous example today. While a large literature focuses on these cross-location differences in entrepreneurial density, questions remain about the supply of entrepreneurial skills across locations. Using Italian data, this column investigates whether selection into entrepreneurship is affected by learning opportunities in adolescence. Those who grow up in an area with higher entrepreneurial density are found to be more likely to become entrepreneurs themselves. They are also more likely to succeed and earn a higher income.
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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.