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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Top Five Monetary Policy Issues To Watch In 2017 – Paul-Martin Foss
5 januari
With a new year come new opportunities as well as new issues to take into consideration. Here are the five most important issues to keep an eye on in 2017.
1. Trump Presidency 2. Ongoing Weakness in Europe 3. China Is Still a Wild Card 4. The Relentless War on Cash 5. A Coming Financial Crisis
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Monetary Policy Can’t Levitate a Broken Economy – Tom Ferguson
10 januari
Central bankers today irresistibly bring to mind the Wizard of Oz. not just because of all the barely disguised political and economic cognates Frank Baum stuffed into his classic—William Jennings Bryan as the cowardly lion, “Oz” as an abbreviation for an ounce of gold, and so on. No, it’s the characters’ missing virtues that grab me: a heart, a brain, and courage. Central bankers today lack all three.
First, the brain. Two generations ago, almost every economist knew what a catastrophe a deficiency of effective demand could create. And in a real crunch, they knew what to do about that. They realized you couldn’t push on a string, so somebody — the government — had to borrow and spend when private markets would not. From the 1980s on, though, the fundamental Keynesian point — the Principle of effective Demand —disappeared in a cloud of statistical double-talk that, when you deconstruct it, turns out to imply estimating potential output as a lagged function of whatever foolish policy is being pursued.
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The future of central bank independence: Results of the CFM–CEPR Survey – Wouter den Haan, Martin Ellison, Ethan Ilzetzki, Michael McMahon, Ricardo Reis
10 januari
Over the past 30 years, most central banks across the advanced economies have been given the ability to conduct monetary policy independently from interference by fiscal and political authorities. The latest Centre for Macroeconomics and CEPR expert survey invited views on whether this era of central bank independence is drawing to a close, particularly in Europe. Only 31 of the 70 respondents disagreed with the statement that there will be significant changes in the independence of monetary policy in the UK and the Eurozone in the foreseeable future. The survey also reveals that the well-established proposition among economists that a reduction in central bank independence will lead to higher inflation is no longer taken for granted, but maintaining central bank independence remains desirable.
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What European Integration Should Look Like – Łukasz Nieroda
12 januari
Talking to the proponents of the European Union whose interest in every day politics is rather marginal (and their knowledge of political thought superficial) one could arrive at a conclusion that very often their support for the project is not fueled by some interventionist sympathies for social engineering but a simple desire for closer integration between nations not inhibited by state-imposed regulations rooted in a nationalist mindset. Moreover, this mindset is consonant with the original plans for Europe conceived long ago by the spiritual founding fathers of the EU: Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, and Alcide de Gasperi. As Philip Bagus claims in the The Tragedy of the Euro, their vision for Europe was initially liberal — i.e., in favor of free trade and relatively free markets — in nature. The views of these liberal advocates for a unified Europe, the whole continent was to be united by the principles of freedom for movement of capital, people, commodities, and services (also known as the four basic liberties).
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RealVision’s 15 “Killer Charts” For Q1 2017 – Tyler Durden
14 januarie
Ranging from the most expensive stock market ever to the dis-similarity in the economic situations facing Donald Trump and Ronald Reagan; and from the excess liquidity driving the price oil to the extraordinarily dangerous growth of credit (debt) relative to GDP, Raoul Pal’s Real Vision has expanded its exceptional services into investment research by publishing the “killer charts” that every market participant should comprehend for the first quarter of 2017…
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When HANK met SAM: New models for macroeconomic policy – Morten Ravn, Vincent Sterk
11 januari
Recent economic events cast doubt on the standard macroeconomic models. This column looks at new economic models built on the idea that inequality and income risk matter for the business cycle and long-run outcomes. While still in their infancy, these models show promise in addressing the concerns about the old New Keynesian models, and in bringing about a shift in the way that macroeconomists think about aggregate fluctuations and stabilisation policy.
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The Eight Forces That Are Pressuring Profits – Chares Hugh Smith
13 januari
These eight forces are structural, and cannot be erased by tax cuts or policy tweaks.
If there is any economic assumption that goes unquestioned, it’s the notion that profits will remain robust for the foreseeable future. This assumption ignores the tidal forces that are now flowing against profits.
Any discussion of corporate profits must start by noting the astonishing rise in U.S. corporate profits since the heyday of the late 1990s dot-com boom. From $800 billion to $2.4 trillion in a few years is not just extraordinary–it’s unprecedented.
Yet rather than wonder if this incredible spike higher is temporary, the financial media assumes nosebleed-lebvel profits are a new and wonderful plateau that can only move higher in the future.
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***What 1 Million US Jobs? Dreading a Trade War, China Sends Alibaba’s Jack Ma to Trump for some Fence Mending – Wolf Richter
9 januari
Carrot and Stick. That’s how China is approaching a pending trade war and all kinds of disagreements proffered by President-Elect Donald Trump. Here’s the carrot, as tweeted by CNBC:
NEW: Alibaba’s Jack Ma is meeting with Trump today about Alibaba’s latest US expansion plans, including creating 1M US jobs over next 5 yrs
A limp carrot? Jack Ma isn’t going to “create” jobs in the US; he will merely allow small US companies to get on Alibaba’s platform and sell directly to Chinese consumers, in competition with Chinese vendors and knock-offs that find their way on the site, which might, should, or could add maybe 1 million jobs in the US over the next five years.
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2017: Change can be a bitch – Raul Ilargi Meijer
14 januari
2016 brought a lot of changes, or rather, brought them to light. In reality, the world has been changing for many years, but many prominent actors benefitted from the changes remaining hidden. Simply because their wealth and power and worldviews are better served that way.
It’s entirely unclear whether we will ever get a chance to see to what extent the efforts to hide developments have been successful, or even been perpetrated at all, because we don’t know to what extent truth and reality will be accessible in the future.
What we can say at this point in time is that the change 2016 delivered were urgently needed. There are many people out there who just want to turn back the clock, and change everything back to how it was, but they can’t, and that’s a good thing, because the way things were was hurting too many people.
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Hideous Constellation of Threats and Challenges Facing Mexico – Don Quijones
8 januari
Things are rapidly going from bad to worse in Mexico. Hundreds of people were arrested and a handful of people killed over the past week as peaceful protests against the government’s hike of gasoline prices (by as much as 20% in some states) descended into widespread looting and rioting. The mood on the street was hardly helped when Mexico’s deeply unpopular president, Enrique Peña Nieto, tried to defend his actions by asking the public, “What would you have done?”
For a lot of people, the answer’s clear: a lot of things, very differently. Right at the top of the list would be launching an all-out war against the endemic culture of corruption plaguing virtually all levels of government. But now, time is fast running out as Mexico now faces a hideous constellation of threats and challenges, all at the same time.
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***Good Economics Is “Bizarre” for Minimum Wage Supporters – Carmen Elena Dorobăț
13 januari
The BBC is running a story titled “Bizarre excuses for failing to pay the minimum wage”. The article follows an investigation by HM Revenues and Customs in the UK, which is organizing a government awareness campaign for underpaid workers. Some of the excuses are indeed hilarious and evidently made up on the go, such as “My accountant and I speak a different language—he doesn’t understand me and that’s why he doesn’t pay my workers the correct wages.”

But the majority are correct economic arguments for why a wage floor, imposed by law, goes against the natural workings of the market.
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Confusion about the lender of last resort – Ulrich Bindseil, Luc Laeven
13 januari
The scale and scope of central bank lender of last resort operations during the Global Crisis raised concerns that central banks may be taking excessive risks and supporting moral hazard. This column argues that criticism of such operations is misguided. In the crisis, central banks did not make financial losses when acting as lender of last resort, which shows that they have applied their frameworks with prudence.
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*** Fed Pays Banks $12 Billion on “Excess Reserves,” Taken from Taxpayer Pockets – Wolf Richter
11 januari
The Federal Reserve just went through its annual ritual of disclosing its preliminary results for the year: The income it earned less its operating expenses, according to central bank accounting, and how much of these earnings it is remitting, as it does every year, to the US Treasury Department. But this statement includes another nugget.
In 2016, the Fed paid our favorite banks $12 billion in interest on their “excess reserves” held at the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks (the New York Fed, the Boston Fed, the Dallas Fed, the San Francisco Fed, etc.). But wait… who’s actually paying that $12 billion?
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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.