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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Are Central Banks Losing Control? – Charles Hugh Smith
9 maart
Eight years after the crisis of 2008-09, central banks are still injecting $200 billion a month into the global financial system to keep it from imploding.
If you want a central banker to choke on his croissant, read him this quote from socio-historian Immanuel Wallerstein: “Countries (have lost the ability) to control what happens to them in the ongoing life of the modern world-system.”
Stated another way, Wallerstein is asking: what do central banks no longer control?
The quote is from Wallerstein’s recent meditation on China: China is Confident: How Realistic?
“The question is how realistic is this self-assessment of China? There are two premises embedded in China’s self-confidence, whose validity need to be investigated. The first is that countries, or rather the governments of states, can actually control what is happening to them in the world-economy. The second is that countries can effectively contain popular discontent, whether by suppression or by limited concessions to demands.
If this was ever even partially true in the modern world-system, these assertions have become very dubious in the structural crisis of the world capitalist system in which we find ourselves today.”
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Central Bank Embrace of Blockchain is All About Control – C.Jay Engel
8 maart
The recent news in the Bitcoin world is China’s building attempt to regulate and oversee its use to a point where it is rendered nearly useless for Chinese consumers. They’ve realized that they can’t truly kill it per se, but they can regulate the exchanges to a point where they can effectively stymie ts attractiveness.
Bitcoin, whether one considers it sound money or not, is a challenge to the established system monopolized by central banks everywhere. The War on Cash narrative fits in with the reality that central banks and governing authorities feel a need to address the lack of control and centralization in the currency world. Just as Bitcoin challenges the use of government protected clearing systems, so cash allows some inkling of freedom by consumers to withdraw from central-bank-driven monetary insanity.
It is no surprise that monetary bureaucrats worldwide have all but declared war on these “alternatives.” It’s all about control — about knowing what everyone is up to at all times. Instead of allowing the individuals to choose on the market, central bankers are all over the budding technology. They want to both challenge the existence of alternatives (Bitcoin) and embrace the technology behind it.
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Long-run money demand redux – Luca Benati, Robert Lucas, Juan Pablo Nicolini, Warren E. Weber
11 maart
Most economists and central bankers no longer consider money supply measures to be useful for conducting monetary policy. One reason is the alleged instability of the relationship between monetary aggregates. This column uses data from 32 countries and spanning up to 100 years to argue that the long-run demand for money is alive and well. Results show a remarkable stability in long run money demand, both within and across countries. Nonetheless, short-run departures can be large and persistent, and further research is needed.
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How Central Banks Enable the Money-Creation Process – Frank Shostak
10 maart
According to traditional economics textbooks, the current monetary system amplifies the initial monetary injections of money. The popular story goes as follows: if the central bank injects $1 billion into the economy and banks have to hold 10% in reserve against their deposits, this will cause the first bank to lend 90% of this $1 billion. The $900 million in turn will end up with the second bank, which will lend 90% of the $900 million. The $810 million will end up with a third bank, which in turn will lend out 90% of $810 million and so on.
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***Are We About to See a “European Monetary Fund?” – Don Quijones
9 maart
As debates rage in Europe over whether or not to take a two-speed or multi-speed approach to post-Brexit integration, Germany rekindled interest in the creation of a European Monetary Fund.
Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble both want to upgrade the grossly unaccountable Luxembourg-based European Stability Mechanism (ESM) into an IMF-style rescue fund that will “be granted the authority to monitor the finances of all eurozone countries,”
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Target the spread – John H. Cochrane
7 maart
What should the Federal Reserve do, to control inflation, given that
nominal interest rate = real interest rate + expected inflation,
and that real interest rates vary over time in ways that the Fed cannot directly observe? In this post I explore an idea I’ve been tossing around for a while: target the spread between nominal and indexed bonds, leaving the level of interest rates to float freely in response to market forces. (It follows Long Run Fed Targets and Michelson Morley and Occam.)
Indexed bonds like TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities) pay an interest rate adjusted for inflation. In simple terms, if a one-year indexed bond offers 1%, you actually get 1% + the rate of CPI inflation at the end of the year. So, with some qualifications (below), markets settle down to
nominal interest rate = indexed rate + expected inflation
The Fed already uses this fact extensively to read market expectations of inflation from the difference between long-term nominal and indexed rates.
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Decoupling Eurozone and US interest rates using unconventional monetary policy – Benoit Mojon
4 maart
In the last two decades, there has been substantial co-movement of US and Eurozone interest rates. This column shows that the ECB’s unconventional monetary policy has largely succeeded in decoupling nominal interest rates in the Eurozone from those in the US since 2014. This has been especially true for rates of up to five years’ maturity since the rise in US interest rates following the election of Donald Trump.
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***The Next Domino to Fall: Commercial Real Estate – Charles Hugh Smith
7 maart
Unless the Federal Reserve intends to buy up every dead and dying mall in America, this is one crisis that the Fed can’t bail out with a few digital keystrokes.
Just as generals prepare to fight the last war, central banks prepare to battle the last financial crisis–which in the present context means a big-bank liquidity meltdown like the one that nearly toppled thr global financial system in 2008-09.
Planning to win the next war by assuming it will be a copy of the last confict is an excellent strategy for losing the next war. The same holds true for the next financial crisis: reckoning that it will be a repeat of 2008 is an excellent way to be caught completely off-guard.
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Deutsche Bank Tries to Stay Alive – Wolf Richter
9 maart
Let me say this upfront: When an at-risk too-big-to-fail bank raises fresh capital from investors, it’s a great thing for affected taxpayers. When push comes to shove, every dollar thus extracted from investors lowers the burden on taxpayers.
Since the Financial Crisis, Deutsche Bank has been raising capital in large waves — $20 billion so far. And now, its new efforts to raise another $8.5 billion by selling shares would bring the total to $28.5 billion, and it would nicely dilute existing shareholders further, and it would be a great thing for affected taxpayers.
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Benefits of GDP-indexed bonds for issuing countries, investors and international financial stability – Bruno Cabrillac, Ludovic Gauvin, Jean-Baptiste Gossé
7 maart
Interest in nominal GDP-indexed bonds has grown in the context of the debate on how to prevent future sovereign debt crises. This column uses simulations up to 2040 to identify which countries would benefit from using such bonds instead of conventional debt. By issuing GDP-indexed bonds, these countries would protect their debt ratios against deflation and recession, and investors could benefit from the catching-up of emerging economies, could partially hedge their currency risk, and could diversify their portfolio compared to equity. The contribution of GDP-indexed bonds to international financial stability would justify international coordination to promote their use.
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NAFTA in Play: How President Trump Could Reshape Trade in North America – Uri Dadush
1 maart
During his run for President of the United States, Mr. Trump called the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), “the worst trade deal ever approved by this country”. His target is Mexico, which runs a $ 50 billion surplus of trade in goods and services with the United States. Trade with Canada, the third NAFTA party, is essentially balanced. However, NAFTA’s provisions cannot be changed without affecting Canada and without Canada’s consent, and the Foreign Ministers of Canada and Mexico have declared that they want the new NAFTA to be negotiated trilaterally, not bilaterally as Mr. Trump prefers.
Irrespective of procedure, negotiations between the United States and Mexico will cover issues that go beyond those of a typical trade agreement.
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***New eBook: The Long Economic and Political Shadow of History – Volume III. Europe and the Americas – Stelios Michalopoulos, Elias Papaioannou
8 maart
Over the past decades, economists working on growth have ‘rediscovered’ the importance of history, leading to the emergence of a vibrant, far-reaching inter-disciplinary stream of work. This column introduces the third and final eBook in our three-part series which examines key themes in this emergent literature and discusses the impact they have on our understanding of the long-run influence of historical events on current economics. This volume focuses on the Americas and Europe and examines how events from history have helped shape their post-war economic identities.
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Designing mega-regional trade agreements – Kazunobu Hayakawa, Shujiro Urata, Taiyo Yoshimi
8 maart
The emergence of mega-regional trade agreements is likely to complicate the trading environment as the ‘noodle bowl’ of overlapping trade agreements gets bigger. This column argues that when multiple preferential tariff schemes are available, exporters’ choice of scheme depends on the coverage of products, the extent of tariff reduction, and the ease of complying with rules of origin. These dimensions should all be taken into account when designing mega-regional trade agreements to encourage their utilisation.
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This is Worse than Before the Last Three Crashes – Wolf Richter
4 maart
How long can this surge in stocks go on? That’s what everyone wants to know. Projections range from “forever” – these projections have become increasingly common – to “it’s already finished.” That’s a fairly wide range.
Everyone has their own reasons for their boundless optimism or their doom-and-gloom outlooks. But there are some factors – boundless optimists should push them aside assiduously – that, from a historical point of view, would trigger tsunami sirens. Because in the end, it’s not different this time. And the cycle of “multiple expansion” and “multiple compression” is one of those factors.
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***Arizona Challenges the Fed’s Money Monopoly – Ron Paul
6 maart
History shows that, if individuals have the freedom to choose what to use as money, they will likely opt for gold or silver.
Of course, modern politicians and their Keynesian enablers despise the gold or silver standard. This is because linking a currency to a precious metal limits the ability of central banks to finance the growth of the welfare-warfare state via the inflation tax. This forces politicians to finance big government much more with direct means of taxation.
Despite the hostility toward gold from modern politicians, gold played a role in US monetary policy for sixty years after the creation of the Federal Reserve. Then, in 1971, as concerns over the US government’s increasing deficits led many foreign governments to convert their holdings of US dollars to gold, President Nixon closed the gold window, creating America’s first purely fiat currency.
Zie voor de ze ontwikkeling ook deze link.
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Revisiting the paradox of capital – Emine Boz, Luis Cubeddu, Maurice Obstfeld
9 maart
After intensifying through the 2000s until the Global Crisis, the ‘uphill’ flow of capital from poor to rich countries decelerated and has recently reversed. This column documents that saving shifts by China, commodity-exporting emerging and developing economies, and advanced economies played key roles in accounting for the apparently puzzling pattern in the pre-crisis decade. Ongoing policy uncertainties in advanced economies mean large and persistent downhill flows of capital are unlikely in the near term. Going forward, capital flows to emerging and developing economies will need to be supported by policies that enhance the benefits of inflows, temper capital flow volatility, and improve the resilience and depth of domestic financial markets.
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The Strategic Triangle That Is Changing The World – Federico Pieraccini
11 maart
While the world continues to decipher, or digest, the new Trump presidency, important changes are afoot within the grand strategic triangle that lies between Russia, Iran and China
Away from the current chaos in the United States, major developments are progressing, with Iran, Russia and China coordinating on a series of significant moves crucial for the future of the Eurasian continent. With a population of more than five billion people, constituting about two-thirds of the Earth’s population, the future of humanity passes through this immense area. Signaling a major change from a unipolar world order based on Europe and the United States to a multipolar world steered by China, Russia and Iran, these Eurasian states are carving out a leading role in the development of the vast continent. As part of the challenges faced by these leading multipolar countries, the disruptive events originating in the post-WWII Euro-Atlantic world order will need to be tackled.
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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.