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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Don’t Want a Liquidity Trap? More Saving Is the Answer – Frank Shostak
19 november
With interest rates in many countries close to zero or even negative, some commentators are of the view that monetary policy of the central banks are likely to become less effective in navigating the economy. In fact it is held that we have most likely reached a situation that the economy is approaching a liquidity trap. But what does this mean?
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A requiem for ‘blame it on Beijing’: Interpreting rotating global current account surpluses – Menzie Chinn, Hiro Ito
21 november
Global imbalances have reappeared, somewhat transformed, and relocated. Using data from developing and industrialised countries covering 1972-2016, this column shows that fiscal factors, rather than savings glut variables, have accounted for a noticeable share of the recent variation in imbalances, including in the US and Germany. The contribution of demographic factors is large for industrialised countries but not for emerging markets. Net official flows shape global imbalances in both developing and industrialised countries.
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The Next Wave of Debt Monetization Will Also Be A Disaster – Daniel Lacalle
17 november
According to the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and the IIF (Institute of International finance) global debt has soared to a new record high. The level of government debt around the world has ballooned since the financial crisis, reaching levels never seen before during peacetime. This has happened in the middle of an unprecedented monetary experiment that injected more than $20 trillion in the economy and lowered interest rates to the lowest levels seen in decades. The balance sheet of the major central banks rose to levels never seen before, with the Bank Of Japan at 100% of the country’s GDP, the ECB at 40% and the Federal Reserve at 20%.
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Curve Control Regime Is Coming To America – Pater Tenebrarum
23 november
Monetary Lunacy, Nipponese Version
Earlier this month, Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Haruhiko Kuroda commented that Japan’s central planners are considering a 50-year government bond issue as a long-term means of putting a floor under super-long interest rates. How this floor would be placed is extremely suspect; we will have more on this in a moment. But first, the dual benefits – according to Japan’s central planners…
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***The Hollowing Out of America – Charles Hugh Smith
20 november
Here is hollowed-out America, an economy of ever-greater financial wealth piling up in the hands of the few while tens of millions of wage-earners can’t afford what was available to everyone, even the working class, in previous eras.
America is being hollowed out, but since we don’t measure what actually matters, the decline has been deep-sixed by the government and media. As I explain in my new book Will You Be Richer or Poorer?, there are a number of reasons why what’s important –social capital, for example–doesn’t get measured.
The most obvious reason is that it’s politically inconvenient for those in power for the hollowing out of America to be quantified. To conceal the decline, institutions only measure what can be massaged to appear positive. These statistics include inflation (Consumer Price Index, CPI),the unemployment rate, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and hundreds of financial numbers: net wealth, bank loans and so on.
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Capital market freedom – John H. Cochrane
20 november
Hoover stands for freedom: ideas defining a free society is our motto. And economic is a central freedom: You can’t guarantee political freedom, social and lifestyle freedom, freedom of speech and expression, without economic freedom.
Economic freedom applies to capital; to financial freedom, as much as to goods, services, and labor. Freedom to buy and sell, without a government watching every transaction. Freedom to save, and invest your capital with the most promising venture, at home or abroad, or to receive investment from and sell assets to anyone you choose — whether the investments conforms to a government’s plans or not.
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Fracking Blows Up Investors Again: Phase 2 of the Great American Shale Oil & Gas Bust – Wolf Richter
23 november
Including billionaires who thought they’d picked the bottom in 2016.
In 2019 through third quarter, 32 oil and gas drillers have filed for bankruptcy, according to Haynes and Boone. Since the end of September, a gaggle of other oil and gas drillers have filed for bankruptcy, including last Monday, natural gas producer Approach Resources. This pushed the total number of bankruptcy filings of oil and gas drillers since the beginning of 2015 to over 200. Other drillers, such as Chesapeake Energy, are jostling for position at the filing counter.
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Service imports, workforce composition, and firm performance – Andrea Ariu, Katariina Nilsson Hakkala , J. Bradford Jensen, Saara Tamminen
22 november
Global trade in services increased six-fold between 1990-2017, representing a threat for workers but a growth opportunity for firms that source these services at lowest cost. This column examines the changes in employment composition and performance of Finnish service importers. Firms that increased imports of service inputs reduced employment of low-skill service workers but increased employment of managers. They also improved their sales, assets, and service exports, and were more likely to survive.
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***Globalist-Endorsed War on Cash May Be China’s Next Terrifying Weapon – Tho Bishop
18 november
Recent protests in Hong Kong, along with the resulting fall out from international corporations questioned for their relationships with mainland China, has placed a renewed focus on the authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party. This has led to several articles identifying ways in which Western countries have learned from the CCP, including Europe’s growing embrace of web censorship and growing interest in the social credit system rolled out in 2018. Given that it wasn’t that long ago that it was common to see Western leaders and neoliberal commentators openly envy aspects of the Chinese political system, these concerns are certainly worth exploring. What should be of equal interest, however, is the ways China may be learning from the West.
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Negative Interest Rates Bite: Bundesbank Warns of Risks to Financial Stability, Moody’s Downgrades Outlook for German Banks – Nick Corbishley
22 november
Yield-starved banks expanded lending to “relatively high-risk businesses” and to the property sector, as the Bundesbank considers house prices in many cities overvalued by 15% to 30%.
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Saxo Bank: “So Much Liquidity Has Been Injected In The Market, It Is Now Impossible To Withdraw It” – Tyler Durden
23 november
Earlier today we showed why, according to Saxo Bank’s Christopher Dembik, the US will drown in deflation over the next 30 years as the collective forces of demographics, technology, oligopolies and global debt accumulation make higher interest rates virtually impossible.
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WTO dispute settlement and the Appellate Body crisis: Insider perceptions and Members’ revealed preferences – Matteo Fiorini, Bernard Hoekman, Petros Mavroidis, Maarja Saluste, Robert Wolfe
20 november
The WTO dispute settlement system is in crisis, endangering the future of the organisation. The proximate reason for alarm is the dwindling number of Appellate Body members, the result of the US blocking new appointments as the terms of sitting members expire. The crisis usually is presented as the US against the world. This column reports on the results of a recent survey of WTO Members’ perceptions of the Appellate Body and the role it plays (or should play). Responses reveal strong support for the basic design of the dispute settlement system, but also that the US is not alone in perceiving that the Body has gone beyond its mandate.
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US National Debt Spiked by $1.3 Trillion in 12 Months, to $23 Tn. But Who Bought This Pile of Treasury Securities? – Wolf Richter
18 november
The Fed opened the vault in September. But others bought too.
The US Gross National Debt has jumped by $1.28 trillion as of today, compared to 12 months ago, to $23.04 trillion. And these are the good times. The economy is rocking and rolling, we’re told. How will this debt balloon during the next economic downturn? Yes, that was a rhetorical question. It’s better to not even think about it. And no one is thinking about it
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Trump’s Impossible Fight To Stop Theft Of Ideas – Mike Shedlock
22 november
Trump is on a mission to stop China from stealing US IP. It’s not possible, but what if it was?
Assume we could stop 100% of IP theft by “free riders” who improve the product and pass it off as their own.
Would we want to?
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Germany and France: The case for structural convergence in the euro area – Declan Costello, Annika Eriksgård Melander, Martin Hallet
22 november
Over the past ten years there has been a substantial rise in income per capita differences between Germany and France.However, it is not a given that the German economy will continue to outperform the French one, and indeed the picture has changed during 2019. This column argues that structural divergences between member states in the euro area contributed to nominal and real divergences, and suggests what can be done to foster convergence between the two countries.
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***Political and Social Conflict Is Accelerating: Here’s Why – Charles Hugh Smith
19 november
All the status quo “fixes” only hasten the collapse of the status quo.
That economic, social and political conflict is accelerating is self-evident. What’s open to debate are the core drivers of conflict / disorder /unraveling.
Here’s the core self-reinforcing dynamic in my view
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Can we have too much data? – Daron Acemoğlu, Ali Makhdoumi, Azarakhsh Malekian, Asuman Ozdaglar
18 november
The Cambridge Analytica scandal highlighted the sophisticated ways social media platforms can allow companies to infer information about users and non-users from shared data. This column shows how correlations between platform users’ and non-users’ characteristics mean companies can obtain data at below equilibrium prices, implying welfare inefficiencies for individuals. The authors make some suggestions of regulations that could improve on these data-sharing inefficiencies for users and non-users of the platforms.
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***Argentina’s Destructive Cycle of Economic Populism – José Niño
19 november
Argentina’s election of a left-wing government last month has people speculating about the country’s future. Previously, I wrote about how neither outgoing President Mauricio Macri nor the ticket of Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner would do much to solve Argentina’s economic ills. Inflation forecasts for the end of 2019 indicate an inevitable reversion to economic turmoil, which has practically become a part of everyday life in Argentina for the past 70 years.
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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.

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