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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Central banks are out of tricks – Charles Hugh Smith
21 januari
Once the power to manage expectations has been lost, the central bank bag of tricks is empty.
No one knows precisely how and when the global unraveling will impact their corner of the planet, but we do know one thing with absolute certainty: central banks are out of tricks.
Like all good conjurers, the major central banks will claim that their magical powers to inflate asset valuations and inspire the animal spirits of risk, borrowing and spending are unimpaired, but this time the audience knows the truth: their magic is threadbare and their trick-bag is empty.
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Why We Need a Recession – Ronald-Peter Stöferle
20 januari
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a recession is defined as a “significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months.” Often, this is understood as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth as measured by a country’s GDP.
Public opinion is generally quite simple in regard to recession: upswings are generally welcomed, recessions are to be avoided. The “Austrians” are however at odds with this general consensus — we regard recessions as healthy and necessary. Economic downturns only correct the aberrations and excesses of a boom. The benefits of recessions include:
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The price of oil, China, and stock market herding – Olivier Blanchard
18 januari
The world economy at the start of 2016 is a genuinely confusing place, with stock markets plummeting. This column discusses the mainstream narratives behind this – China and the oil price dip – and finds them wanting. The economic linkages seem too weak to justify the gyrations. Instead, they may be the result of herding or a delayed reaction to the global economy’s lower-for-long growth prospects.
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Dollar-Based Investors Eviscerated in Global Stocks – Wolf Richter
18 januari
Central banks have lost their aura of omnipotence.
In Saudi Arabia, the Tadawul All Share Index plunged 5.4% on Sunday and dropped further on Monday before ticking up a smidgen. It’s at the lowest level since March 2011. Soothsayers blamed oil, and what Iran will do to the already oversupplied oil market now that the nuclear sanctions have been lifted. But Saudi stocks started losing it in September 2014 and have since collapsed 50%.
Russia’s MICEX stock market index is down only 13% from its high in November, 2015. But the RTSI dollar-calculated index of Russian shares plunged over 7% on Monday as I’m writing this, is down 40% since May 2015 and 70% since August 2011. Every big rally in between was followed by an even bigger slide. The major difference between the dollar-calculated RTSI and the ruble-calculated MICEX is the value of the ruble, which has plunged 2% today to 79.3 rubles to the dollar, a new all-time low. It’s down 57% against the dollar since mid-2014 and 64% since mid-2011. The Central Bank isn’t even trying anymore to prop it up.
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The World Is Not Running Out Of Storage Space For Oil – Nick Cunningham
21 januari
The IEA struck a dour tone on the state of the global economy in 2016 in its latest monthly Oil Market Report, and even included a stark warning that the markets could “drown in over-supply” because of rising storage levels around the world.
Oil analysts have closely watched storage levels as an important barometer of where the markets were heading. The thinking was that inventories would rise as the supply overhang persisted, but storage facilities would then drawdown relatively quickly as production slowed. But in early 2015 a funny thing happened: Inventory levels surged to their highest levels in 80 years in the U.S., pushing oil prices down into the $40s per barrel.
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New Paper Makes Powerful Case Against Tax Treaties – Nicholas Shaxson
15 januari
Tax treaties are an arcane but important part of the international trade and investment system. When a business from one jurisdiction invests in another, the question then arises as to which jurisdiction gets to tax which bits of the income that the investment generates. So countries have for years signed Double Tax Treaties or Double Tax Agreements (DTAs) with each other, to sort out these and other questions. Since the global treaty system began to emerge (after Austria-Hungary signed one with Prussia in 1899), the core aim of the system’s designers has been to make sure that multinationals don’t get taxed twice on the same income: so-called ‘double taxation’. Countries sign them because they think they will attract and smooth the flow of inward investment. It will make their country more ‘competitive,’ the thinking goes.
All of which sound like perfectly reasonable ideas. But of course, beneath these reasonable ideas there’s a world of possible mischief.
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Another Reason Why the Middle Class and the Velocity of Money Are in Terminal Decline – Charles Hugh Smith
20 januari
This has three extremely negative consequences.
In response to a recent post on the structural decline in the velocity of money, correspondent Mike Fasano described a key dynamic in both the decline of money velocity and the middle class.
“There is another reason for falling velocity. People like me who have saved all their lives realize that they their savings (no matter how much) will never throw off enough money to allow retirement, unless I live off principal. This is especially so since one can reasonably expect social security to phased out, indexed out or dropped altogether. Accordingly, I realize that when I get to the point when I can no longer work, I’ll be living off capital and not interest. This is an incentive to keep working and not to spend.”
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700 Days In No Man’s Land——Why They Can’t Keep It Up – David Stockman
23 januari
This week brought another reason to get out of the casino, and to sell it short if you can tolerate some volatility.
On Friday the Japanese stock market ripped 6% higher and the European bourses were up 5% because their respective central bankers emitted some hints of more easing just ahead. Even the US market managed to find green for the week.
Apparently, the day traders and robo-machines think BTFD still works. But they are going to be sorely disappointed——just as they have been for nearly 700 days running.
That is, since the S&P 500 crossed the 1870 mark in early March 2014, there have been 35 attempts to rally higher. All of them have failed.
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*** Ruble Plunges 26% in 90 days, 6% in Two Days, Hits New Low, Government Says to Heck with it – Wolf Richter
21 januari
The ruble plunged 3.8% on Wednesday and another 2.8 on Thursday to a new all-time low of 83.85 to the dollar, at 5:30 PM Moscow time, blowing through the previous catastrophic panic low of December 2014. At the time, the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank deployed desperate, and ultimately very costly shock-and-awe measures to stop the ruble from spiraling out of control. And it triggered all kinds of drama.
On December 16, 2014, the Central Bank announced that it increased its benchmark rate by a brutal 6.5 percentage points to a dizzying 17%, after having already jacked up rates in the prior week to 10.5%. And the Ministry of Finance announced it would begin selling Russia’s crown jewels, its dwindling foreign currency reserves, and with the proceeds mop up rubles.
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Resilience of market liquidity – Luis Brandao-Marques, Gaston Gelos
18 januari
Concerns about both the level of bond market liquidity and its fragility have risen lately, prompted partly by events such as the October 2014 Treasury bond flash rally in the US, or the April 2015 Bund tantrum in Europe. This column assesses current market liquidity and resilience, discerning several key policy recommendations from the evidence.
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*** Three Centuries of Boom-Bust in Spain – Daniel Fernández-Renau AtienzaDavid Howden
21 januari
For Spain, 1492 was a transcendent year. The discovery of the New World and the vast hordes of gold and new riches was a springboard vaulting Spain from a barely-known kingdom in medieval Europe, to the most influential global power of the day.
However, this process was not immediate. Despite the vast gold inflows that Spain received, the discovery was a mixed blessing. During this prosperous time, the Spanish Crown declared itself bankrupt nine times: 1557, 1575, 1596, 1607, 1627, 1647, 1652, 1662, and 1666. Spanish finances did not improve significantly until after the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) when the Bourbons succeeded the Habsburgs to the Spanish throne.
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Cables, sharks, and the geography of the foreign exchange market – Barry Eichengreen, Arnaud Mehl, Romain Lafarguette
22 januari
There is ongoing debate about the impact of technological progress on the geography of trade and production. One view is that cheap technology has attenuated the effect of distance, while others argue that location still matters. This column explores the issue in the context of foreign exchange markets. It examines how submarine fibre optic cables that link locations to financial hubs have affected the location of transactions. The findings suggest, on balance, that technological progress has made proximity to a trading centre more important.
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“If You’re Not Confused, You Don’t Understand Things Very Well” – Vitaliy Katsenelson
22 januari
How Investors Should Deal With The Overwhelming Problem Of Understanding The World Economy
“What the —- do I do now?” This was the actual subject line of an e-mail I received that really summed up most of the correspondence I got in response to an article I published last summer.
To be fair, I painted a fairly negative macro picture of the world, throwing around a lot of fancy words, like “fragile” and “constrained system.” I guess I finally figured out the three keys to successful storytelling: One, never say more than is necessary; two, leave the audience wanting more; and three …
Well, never mind No. 3, but here is more. Before I go further, if you believe the global economy is doing great and stocks are cheap, stop reading now; this column is not for you. I promise to write one for you at some point when stocks are cheap and the global economy is breathing well on its own — I just don’t know when that will be. But if you believe that stocks are expensive — even after the recent sell-off — and that a global economic time bomb is ticking because of unprecedented intervention by governments and central banks, then keep reading.
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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.