Economische aanraders: Veren of Lood biedt u op zondag wekelijks een inkijkje in (minstens) 15 belangrijke of informatieve artikelen en interviews die vooral 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. Er zijn in deze rubriek altijd verschillende economische scholen vertegenwoordigd, en we streven er naar die diversiteit te handhaven.

We nemen wekelijks 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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Understanding the Global Recession of 2019 – Charles Hugh Smith
12 november
Isn’t it obvious that repeating the policies of 2009 won’t be enough to save the system from a long-delayed reset?
2019 is shaping up to be the year in which all the policies that worked in the past will no longer work. As we all know, the Global Financial Meltdown / recession of 2008-09 was halted by the coordinated policies of the major central banks, which lowered interest rates to near-zero, bought trillions of dollars of bonds and iffy assets such as mortgage-backed securities, and issued unlimited lines of credit to insolvent banks, i.e. unlimited liquidity.
Central governments which could do so went on a borrowing / spending binge to boost demand in their economies, and pursued other policies designed to bring demand forward, i.e. incentivize households to buy today what they’d planned to buy in the future.
This vast flood of low-cost credit and liquidity encouraged corporations to borrow money and use it to buy back their stocks, boosting per-share earnings and sending stocks higher for a decade.
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Rising Brexit uncertainty has reduced investment and employment – Nicholas Bloom, Scarlet Chen, Paul Mizen
16 november
The majority of businesses in the UK report that Brexit is a source of uncertainty. This column uses survey responses from around 3,000 businesses to evaluate the level and impact of this uncertainty. It finds that Brexit uncertainty has already reduced growth in investment by 6 percentage points and employment by 1.5 percentage points, and is likely to reduce future UK productivity by half of a percentage point.
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It’s Not a Problem When the Chinese Don’t Spend Their Dollars Here – Norman Van Cott
16 november
What if you found out that the Chinese are burying dollars under the Great Wall of China? What would your reaction be? Would you be upset that the Chinese weren’t spending those dollars on U. S. exports, narrowing Americans’ balance of trade deficit with China? Judging by the anti-Chinese sentiment characterizing public discussion of Chinese-U.S. economic relations these days, I suspect you would.
This was a question I always posed to my university honors students when going through the fundamentals of international economics. It was a great teaching moment, because without exception, and without prompting, the students consistently parroted media concern about the balance of trade deficit with China, and that if the Chinese were spending these dollars on U.S. goods it would reduce the U. S. trade deficit, benefiting the United States.
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“Outlook Deteriorated Even More for the Eurozone than for Germany” (Despite NIRP?) – Wolf Richter
13 november
Export-Dependent Germany Hit by More than US-China Trade War.
While the trade disputes between the US and China loom large for Germany’s export-dependent economy, the developing malaise is broader. The German stock index DAX has dropped 15.4% since the end of January, even after today’s 1.3% gain. “Negative growth” in GDP is now a term that is cropping up to describe the third quarter. The median estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg now shows a decline in GDP of -0.1% from Q2 to Q3. The official first estimate will be released Wednesday.
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Does China Have Enough Gold to Move Toward Hard Currency? – Alasdair Macleod
17 november
Are the Chinese Keynesian?
We can be reasonably certain that Chinese government officials approaching middle age have been heavily westernised through their education. Nowhere is this likely to matter more than in the fields of finance and economics. In these disciplines there is perhaps a division between them and the old guard, exemplified and fronted by President Xi. The grey-beards who guide the National Peoples Congress are aging, and the brightest and best of their successors understand economic analysis differently, having been tutored in Western universities.
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Global trends in interest rates – Marco Del Negro, Domenico Giannone, Marc Giannoni, Andrea Tambalotti
12 november
Interest rates are at their lowest levels of the last 150 years in virtually all advanced economies. This column argues that this unprecedented environment reflects secular global forces that have lowered the trend in the world real interest rate by about two percentage points over the past 30 to 40 years. Whatever forces might lift real interest rates in the future must also be global, such as a sustained pickup in world economic growth, or a better alignment between the global demand and supply for safe and liquid assets.
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Does a Falling Money Supply Cause Economic Slumps? – Frank Shostak
13 november
In his writings, Professor Milton Friedman blamed central bank policies for causing the Great Depression. According to Friedman, the Federal Reserve failed to pump enough reserves into the banking system to prevent a collapse in the money stock. In response to this failure, Friedman argued the money stock M1, which stood at $28.264 billion in October 1929; fell to $19.039 billion by April 1933 — a decline of almost 33%.1
Because of the fall in the money stock argued Friedman, economic activity followed suit. By July 1932 year-on-year industrial production fell by over 31%. Also, year-on-year the consumer price index (CPI) had plunged. By October 1932, the CPI fell by 10.7%.
Contrary to Friedman’s conclusions, the fall in the money stock was a result — and not the cause — of the shrinking pool of wealth brought about by the previous loose monetary policies of the central bank.
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***France Chases London’s Gold Market Amid Soft-Brexit Hopes – Don Quijones
15 november
In the feverish reshuffling of financial services for a post-Brexit world, London still comes out ahead, but less so.
As two years of Brexit negotiations finally come to a head and all eyes are on British Prime Minister Theresa May’s frantic efforts to get the draft deal passed, France is making a big move on the City of London’s gold market. As Reuters reported Monday, the Bank of France has partnered with mega-bank JP Morgan Chase, one of the world’s largest bullion trading banks, to offer global central banks and sovereign wealth funds the full gamut of swaps, leases, and gold deposits.
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Pence, Xi Showdown Crushes Hopes For Trade War De-escalation – Tyler Durden
17 november
For two consecutive days US stocks surged on renewed hopes that trade tensions between the US and China may be thawing ahead of the upcoming G-20 meeting between presidents Trump and Xi, when first an FT suggested that USTR Lighthizer had said no further tariff raises would be forthcoming (the report has since been denied), and subsequently when Trump himself told reporters on Friday he may not impose more tariffs after China sent the United States a list of measures it was willing to take to resolve trade tensions.
Unfortunately for markets, and bulls such as JPM’s Marko Kolanovic who saw last week’s traces of trade de-escalation as a reason to quadruple-down on his recommendation to buy stocks, any hopes of an imminent trade war end or even ceasefire came crashing down overnight when Vice President Mike Pence traded sharp barbs with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in back-to-back speeches at the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit in Papua New Guinea, which confirmed yet again that neither country is willing to compromise in the escalating trade war.
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Automation and job displacement in emerging markets: New evidence – Mitali Das
13 november
Evidence that routinisation lies behind labour market polarisation has been documented for many developed economies, but less is known about its impact in emerging markets. This column draws on national censuses and labour surveys for 160 countries between 1960 and 2015 to argue that although large-scale labour market dislocation is not imminent, emerging markets are becoming increasingly exposed to routinisation – and thus labour market polarisation – from the long-term effects of structural transformation and the onshoring of routine-intensive jobs.
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***Venezuela Has Hyperinflation. Now What? – Jon Aldekoa
15 november
Venezuela is the fifty-seventh country to encounter hyperinflation in modern history. The economist Steve Hanke estimated — using the doctrine of purchasing power parity (PPP) — that the country’s monthly inflation exceeded 50 percent for more than thirty days in November 2016. Therefore, it entered the list of Hanke-Krus hyperinflations.The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that Venezuela’s annual inflation will reach 1,000,000 percent by the end of 2018, and the country’s National Assembly recently estimated that it would reach 4,000,000 percent.
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How US Oil Booms & Busts Hit Industrial Production – Wolf Richter
16 november
Fueled by cheap money and by dashed hopes of high oil prices.
Industrial production in October rose 4.1% from a year ago, the Fed Board of Governors reported this morning. This was in the upper portion of the range since 2010. It was powered in part by the blistering oil & gas production boom that followed the Oil Bust of 2015 and 2016.
This chart shows the percent change in industrial production from the same month a year earlier. The red bars – industrial production falling year-over-year – coincide with the recession in the goods-based economy, the transportation recession, and the Oil Bust:
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The Era Of Gains Is Over – Adam Taggart
16 november
Ever since the central banks became serial bubble blowers twenty years ago, household wealth has mostly been driven by asset price inflation:
But this has been a quixotic pursuit. Created by pulling tomorrow’s prosperity into today, these asset price bubbles are unsustainable, and invariably suffer violent corrections at their end.
So far, the central banks have responded to these corrections by simply doing more of the same, just at greater and greater intensity. To keep the current Everything Bubble going, the world’s central banks have not only had to more than quintuple their collective balance sheets, but have recently had to resort to the extreme (desperate?) measure of injecting the greatest amount of liquidity ever in 2016 and 2017.
History has shown us that the height an asset bubble reaches is proportional to the damage it wreaks when it bursts. Applying this logic, the coming pop of the Everything Bubble will be devastating.
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Does Any of This Make Sense? – Charles Hugh Smith
16 november
Does any of this make sense? No. But it’s so darn profitable to the oligarchy, it’s difficult to escape debt-serfdom and tax-donkey servitude.
We rarely ask “does this make any sense?” of things that are widely accepted as beneficial– or if not beneficial, “the way it is,” i.e. it can’t be changed by non-elite (i.e. the bottom 99.5%) efforts.
Of the vast array of things that don’t make sense, let’s start with borrowing from future income to spend more today. This is of course the entire foundation of consumer economies such as the U.S.: the number of households which buy a car or house with cash is near-zero, unless 1) they just sold a bubble-valuation house and paid off their mortgage in escrow or 2) they earned wealth via fiscal prudence, i.e. the avoidance of debt and the exultation of saving.
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The Intolerable Scourge of Fake Capitalism – MN Gordon
17 november
Ivestment grade junk
All is now bustle and hubbub in the late months of the year. This goes for the stock market too. If you recall, on September 22nd the S&P 500 hit an all-time high of 2,940. This was nearly 100 points above the prior high of 2,847, which was notched on January 26th. For a brief moment, it appeared the stock market had resumed its near decade long upward trend.
We actually did not believe in the validity of the September breakout attempt: the extremely large divergence between the broad market and the narrow big cap leadership was one of many signs that an internal breakdown in the stock market was well underway. It is probably legitimate to refer to the January 2018 high as the “orthodox” stock market peak – the point at which most stocks topped out.
Chartists witnessed the take out of the January high and affirmed all was clear for the S&P 500 to continue its ascent. They called it a text book confirmation that the bull market was still intact. Now, just two months later, a great breakdown may be transpiring.
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***The Case Against Pharma Patent Monopolies – Gilbert Berdine
13 november
Entrepreneurs face decisions in the free market for any good or service. Entrepreneurs may enter new markets, leave existing markets, or adjust the quality or price for goods offered in markets. These decisions are based on anticipation of future prices and costs. The entrepreneur assumes the risk of loss for bad decisions and is entitled to the profits realized from good decisions.
Entrepreneurs must compete with other suppliers either on the basis of lower price or improved quality. Copying existing items and offering them at lower prices is a common means of competition. Copying is not stealing as long as the raw materials, labor, and the capital necessary for production belong to the producer.
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