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 impact of trade agreements: New approach, new insights – Swarnali Ahmed Hannan
1 juli
The Trans-Pacific Partnership has renewed interest in understanding the impact of trade agreements. This column employs a new approach – synthetic controls– to understand the impact of past trade agreements. The results show that trade agreements can generate substantial gains: on average, an increase of exports by 80 percentage points over ten years. The export gains are higher when emerging markets have trade agreements with advanced markets. Interestingly, all the countries in NAFTA have gained substantially due to the agreement.
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***Brexit or Fixit – John H. Cochrane
27 juni
Many commenters compare Brexit to the American revolution. I think the constitutional convention is a better analogy for the moment and challenge ahead. A first attempt at union resulted in an unworkable Federal structure. Europe needs a constitutional convention to fix its union.
The EU’s first attempt was basically aristocratic/technocratic. Brussels tells the peasants what to do. The EU needs a hardy dose of accountability, representation, checks and balances — all the beautiful structures of the US Constitution. What little thought the EU put in to these matters is clearly wanting.
America did not wait for a state to leave. But, though even the Pope admits the EU structure wasn’t working, the EU needed this wake up call. Bring the UK to the convention, and bring them back. Fixit. (#Fixit?)
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Credibility of central bank(er)s – Maria Demertzis, Nicola Viegi
28 juni
Both the Fed and the ECB have managed to remain credible since the Global Crisis, but their credibility levels have evolved differently. This column argues that since inflation in the US and the Eurozone has been similar in the past eight years, the difference in the way that credibility has evolved is the result of the different macroeconomic policy mixes applied.
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The End Game Of Bubble Finance: Political Revolt – David Stockman
30 juni
During Friday’s bloodbath I heard a CNBC anchor lady assuring her (scant) remaining audience that Brexit wasn’t a big sweat. That’s because it is purportedly a political crisis, not a financial one.
Presumably in the rarified canyons of Wall Street, politics doesn’t matter much. After all, when things get desperate enough, Washington caves and does “whatever it takes” to get the stock averages moving upward again.
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After “Brexit,” Can We Exit a Few Things Too? – Ron Paul
28 juni
Last week’s UK vote to leave the EU may have come as a shock to many, but the sentiment that led British voters to reject rule from Brussels is nothing unique. In fact it is growing sentiment worldwide. Frustration with politics as usual, with political parties that really do not differ in philosophy, with an economy that serves the one percent at the expense of the rest of society is a growing phenomenon throughout Europe and in the United States as well. The Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump phenomena are but one example of a frustrated public sensing something is very wrong with society and looking for a way out.
What is happening in the UK, in Europe, and in the US, is nothing less than a breakdown of the entire system. The EU was meant to be a customs union where post-World War II Western Europe could rebuild itself through free trade and a reduction in bureaucracy. Through corruption and political ambition it became an unelected bully government in Brussels, where the well-connected were well compensated and insulated from the votes of mere citizens.
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The greatest reshuffle of individual incomes since the Industrial Revolution – Branko Milanovic
1 juli
The effects of of globalisation on income distributions in rich countries have been studied extensively. This column takes a different approach by looking at developments in global incomes from 1988 to 2008. Large real income gains have been made by people around the median of the global income distribution and by those in the global top 1%. However, there has been an absence of real income growth for people around the 80-85th percentiles of the global distribution, a group consisting of people in ‘old rich’ OECD countries who are in the lower halves of their countries’ income distributions.
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***Who Really Holds the Cards in the EU-Brexit Stand-off? – Don Quijones
29 juni
For the first time ever, the exit door leading out of the European Union is open, albeit slightly. Against all expectations, the UK has somehow managed to jam its figurative foot in the gap between the metaphorical door and its frame. Whether it actually pries the door open or timidly withdraws its foot, only time will tell.
As we warned even before the elections, if the British government fails to honor a majority vote to leave the EU, it won’t be the first time that a referendum in the EU, after people voted the “wrong way,” would essentially be squashed. And if London does manage to pull off a tactical withdrawal from the EU, it’s unlikely to be painless.
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Brexit and the Crisis of Capitalism – Charles Hugh Smith
1 juli
Thousands of commentaries have been issued about Brexit in the past week. I’ve written four myself. Most discuss Brexit as the result of immigration issues, class war, political theater, a reaction against the European Union’s bureaucratic power, sovereignty, etc. Other essays focus on the potential upsides or downsides of Brexit.
What few if any commentators present is the idea that Brexit is a symptom of the Crisis of Capitalism.
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Unfounded Debt Fears Block Economic Recovery – Anis Chowdhury, Jomo Kwame Sundaram
16 juni
Debt anxieties are not new, often fanned by political competition. But so is a double dip recession due to premature deficit reduction. For example, to seek re-election, President Roosevelt backed down from his New Deal in 1937, promising that “a balanced budget [was] on the way”. In 1938, he slashed government spending, and unemployment shot up to 19 per cent.
Many countries had huge public debts when World War II ended. Despite such anxieties and calls for drastic spending cuts, governments continued to spend. Had they caved in, Europe would not have been rebuilt so soon. As governments continued with massive expenditure to rebuild their countries, economies grew and the debt burden diminished rapidly with rapid economic growth. Clearly, debt is sustainable if government expenditure enhances both growth and productivity.
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What the Heck is Happening to Junk Bonds? – Wolf Richter
1juli
If you bought the crappiest bonds on February 10, you’ve made a killing unless the company defaulted, in which case you got killed, and a lot of companies defaulted. But so much money poured into junk bonds that prices soared and yields plunged even for the riskiest near-default issues.
At the riskiest end, junk bonds rated CCC and lower, with D being default, the average yield, as per BofA Merrill Lynch High Yield index, plunged from over 21% on February 10 to 15% at the close yesterday. And bond prices skyrocketed. The BofA Merrill Lynch total return index for CCC and lower rated bonds soared 30% over the period:
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Macroeconomics in Germany: The forgotten lesson of Hjalmar Schacht – Biagio Bossone, Stefano Sylos Labini
1 juli
Despite facing many of the same challenges, Germany’s current macroeconomic policy is substantially different to those of other countries, in part due to the economy legacy of Walter Eucken. This column considers the economic policy of Hjalmar Schacht, whose ‘MEFO-bills’ monetary solution ended the years of economic struggle caused by the Treaty of Versailles’ reparations commitments. By tying the bills to output, Schacht was able to stimulate output, and eliminate unemployment. This historical implication has clear modern-day implications, with parallels to ‘helicopter money’ policy and Italy’s recent ‘fiscal money’ proposal.
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The Problem Isn’t Fed Policy — It’s the Fed – John Barron
27 juni
The world is awash with newly printed fiat money. This is a concern to most, but not all, economists, because the increase in the money supply has failed to deliver its promise of providing “liftoff” to the world economy. Nevertheless, most economists in positions of influence to governments and universities still defend the necessity that there is some organization that can create more money out of thin air in order to provide for full employment or as some sort of countercyclical intervention.
For these economists, the issue is not whether money printing is proper; the issue is only when money printing is warranted and the extent of the intervention. The debate, such as it is, has led to calls for some type of rules based monetary system which would follow some known formula. Milton Friedman eschewed countercyclical discretion in favor of a known annual increase in the money supply, regardless of economic conditions. There would be no central bank discretion, which Friedman feared would lead always to price inflation. By contrast Stanford Professor John B. Taylor famously penned his “Taylor Rule” that supposedly would guide the central bank to provide just the right amount of countercyclical intervention to provide full employment with minimum price inflation. The Taylor Rule would provide some limited central bank discretion.
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Has the UK financial system held back UK investment? – Saleem Bahaj, Iren Levina, Jumana Saleheen
28 juni
Finance plays a key role in growth by connecting savers and investors, but it can also be a source of crises. This column discusses whether there has been enough finance to enable productive investments. UK non-financial companies appear to have enough internal funds to cover all their investment taken as a whole, but the evidence suggests that small firms face shortfalls. The column also pleads for the development of new and better data sources to help measure the supply of finance that can be used to exploit productive investment opportunities.
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Let’s Ditch the Fed for the Right Reasons – Jonathan Newman
30 juni
In his new book Who Needs the Fed?, John Tamny makes a convincing case that the Federal Reserve is wholly unnecessary. Chapter after chapter, he offers examples of individuals engaging in credit transactions and explains how any government manipulation of these transactions is counterproductive or, at best, unnecessary.

Uitgebreide recensie van John Tammy – Who Needs the Fed?
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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.