Economische aanraders: 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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Whose Private-Sector Debt Will Implode Next: US, Canada, China, Eurozone, Japan? – Wolf Richter
22 november
The Financial Crisis in the US was a consequence of too much debt and too much risk, among numerous other factors, and the whole house of cards came down. Now, after eight years of experimental monetary policies and huge amounts of deficit spending by governments around the globe, public debt has ballooned. Gross national debt in the US just hit $20.5 trillion, or 105% of GDP. But that can’t hold a candle to Japan’s national debt, now at 250% of GDP.
And private-sector debt, which includes household and business debts — how has it fared in the era of easy money?
In the US, total debt to the private non-financial sector has ballooned to $28.5 trillion. That’s up 14% from the $25 trillion at the crazy peak of the Financial Crisis and up 63% from 2004.
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The rise and future of progressive redistribution – Peter Lindert
20 november
There has been a blossoming of research into fiscal incidence by income class. This column combines century-long histories for Britain and South American countries with previous research to offer a global history of government income redistribution. Contrary to some allegations, the shift towards progressivity in government budgets over the last 100 years has not been reversed since the 1970s. The rise in inequality since the 1970s therefore appears to owe nothing to a net shift government redistribution toward the rich.
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The Digital Revolution Has Empowered Central Banks – Brendan Brown
23 november
We won’t know till the end of this cycle how much mal-investment has occurred under the great monetary inflation which started in 2010. We may already suspect, though, that much of this will be in “big tech” and related fields. Any final reckoning should also include wider political and socio-economic damage not included in a narrow economic calculus.
Scott Galloway describes skilfully and colourfully the power of the big tech narrative in his just published and highly readable book “The Four: the hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google”. The general critic would take issue with his repeated use of a four-letter expletive. The monetary critic can point to a bigger problem with the book – a lack of any analysis linking the amazing spread of the big tech narrative to the prevailing monetary disorder.
If central banks had not created a famine of interest income, the big four would surely not have enthralled investor audiences to anything like the actual extent. Hunger for yield means that investors become willing to take on bad bets (actuarial value highly negative but some possibility of a big pay-off) rather than suffer certain loss on monetary assets. This is an example of “loss aversion” as diagnosed in the pioneering work on mental flaws of investors by Daniel Kahneman and now prominent in behavioural finance theory.
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The Movement to Replace Neoliberalism Is on the Ascendency – Where Should It Go Next? – Laurie Laybourn-Langton
24 november
Ten years after the crash, the movement to replace neoliberalism is in the ascendency. Well organised campaigns cover everything from the promotion of pluralism in economic curricula to the application of new economic principles in local communities. Academics and campaigners, who prior to the crash were lone voices in the wind, have been joined by a growing chorus of economists and commentators acknowledging that neoliberalism is not working. Importantly, these now include those in mainstream institutions that have become synonymous with the status quo, such as the IMF and OECD. Meanwhile, bottom up movements, surfing a heady mix of social media and dissatisfaction with orthodox economic ideas, are beginning to score political victories across the world.
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Inflation targeting and interest rate procyclicality in the UK and in Latin America – Andrew Powell
25 november
The recent interest rate rise in the UK occurred despite negative economic news. This is not what conventional inflation-targeting policy would imply. This column argues that recent Latin American experience suggests the theory underlying inflation targeting may need to be reconsidered. Specifically, for small open economies, the role of the exchange rate and inflation expectations should be considered when deciding how to react.
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Beware the Marginal Buyer, Borrower and Renter – Charles Hugh Smith
22 november
Bubbles always look unstoppable, yet they always burst.
When times are good, the impact of the marginal buyer, borrower and renter on the market is often overlooked. By “marginal” I mean buyers, borrowers and renters who have to stretch their finances to the maximum to afford the purchase, loan or rent.
In bubble manias, buyers of real estate reckon the potential appreciation gains are worth the risk of buying a house they really can’t afford with the intention of flipping the home for a profit.
Workers moving to high-rent cities reckon they’ll either make more money going forward or find a cheaper flat later, so they pony up the high rent.
When there’s steady overtime or generous tips adding to the household income, buying a new car or getting a new auto lease looks do-able.
It’s difficult to assess how many recent buyers, borrowers and renters are marginal, but given the stagnation in household incomes and rising debt loads, it seems reasonable to guess that a substantial number of recent buyers, borrowers and renters are one lay-off or one missed bonus or one unexpected expense away from being unable to pay their mortgage, loan payment or rent.
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The Corporate Earnings Fiction in Q3 – Wolf Richter
19 november
The Biggest Sinners in the Dow.
All 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average have now reported earnings for the third quarter. As required, they reported these earnings under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). These standardized accounting rules are supposed to allow investors to compare the results of different companies. But that’s too harsh a fate for many of our corporate heroes, and so they proffer their own and much more pleasing accounting strategies – as expressed in “adjusted” earnings and “adjusted” earnings per share (EPS).
Of the 30 companies in the DJIA, 14 reported “adjusted” or “non-GAAP” earnings in Q3 that were significantly higher than their GAAP earnings. Total “adjusted” EPS of these 14 Dow components exceeded their total EPS under GAAP by 26%! Nice work!
“Adjusted” earnings are the great American fiction conceived to serve the great American passion: inflating share prices by hook or crook.
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Are Markets Really as Calm as they Seem? – Thorsten Polleit
21 november
Indicators for financial market “stress” have reached their lowest levels in decades. For instance, stock market volatility has never been this low since the early 1990s. Credit spreads have been shrinking, and prices for credit default swaps have fallen to pre-crisis levels. In fact, investors are no longer haunted by concerns about the stability of the financial system, potential credit defaults, and unfavourable surprises in the economy or financial assets markets. How come?
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The impact of big research infrastructure facilities on local scientific output – Christian Helmers, Henry Overman
25 november
Highly localised research infrastructure investment, such as in the Large Hadron Collider, often leads to major scientific breakthroughs, but there is little evidence on the longer-term and wider geographical impacts on scientific output. This column uses the example of the UK’s Diamond Light Source to study the impact of large facilities on where scientific research is conducted. Not only do such investments substantially increase directly related research in the local area, they also create spillovers on unrelated research through knowledge sharing.
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Citi’s Shocking Admission: “There Is A Growing Fear Among Central Bankers They’ve Lost Control” – Tyler Durden
25 november
Earlier we showed a variation on a VIX chart from Citi’s Hans Lorenzen which, if it doesn’t impress, or scare you, then nothing probably will.
However, leaving readers unimpressed – and unscared – will not satisfy Lorenzen, which is why the credit strategist who works together with the godfather of rational doom, Matt King, and has been warning for weeks that now is the time to sell credit, unloads in one of the more effusive missives of dripping negativity to hit during this holiday week when one after another equity sellside analyst has been desperate to outgun each other with their ridiculous 2018 year end S&P forecasts.
And while Lorenzen touches on many things, at its core, his warning is straight out of Shumpeter: the longer nothing changes, the greater the crash will ultimately be, a topic which DB’s Aleksandar Kocic dissected over the summer, even defining an entirely new term in the process: metastability.
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What Determines a Currency’s Rate of Exchange? – Frank Shostak
25 november
Currency rates of exchange appear to be moving in response to so many factors that it makes it almost impossible to ascertain where the rate of exchange is likely to be headed. But rather than paying attention to the multitude of variables, it is more sensible to focus on the essential variable.
As far as the currency rate of exchange determination is concerned, this variable is the relative changes in the purchasing power of various monies. The relative purchasing power of various monies sets the underlying rate of exchange.
A price of a basket of goods is the amount of money paid for the basket. We can also say that the amount of money paid for a basket of goods is the purchasing power of money with respect to the basket of goods.
If in the US the price of a basket of goods is 1 dollar and in Europe an identical basket of goods is sold for 2 euros then the rate of exchange between the US dollar and the euro must be two euros per one dollar.
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Reforming the Eurozone: Structuring versus restructuring sovereign debts – Guido Tabellini
23 november
In the debate on European reforms, a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism for the Eurozone is often proposed. This column argues that such a mechanism is not required. Instead, Eurozone member states should issue GDP-linked bonds, which would enact an implicit seniority structure on their sovereign debt and make the Eurozone more resilient to the next crisis.
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Capitalism: Not With a Bang But With a (Prolonged) Whimper – Jayati Ghosh
21 november
It is probably obvious to everyone that global capitalism is in dire straits, notwithstanding the brave talking up of output recovery that now characterises almost every meeting of the international governing elite. Even so, discussions of the end of capitalism still typically seem overstated and futile, not least because those hoping and mobilising for bringing in an alternative system are everywhere so scattered, weak and demoralised. In effect, capitalism is the only game in town, which is why even in its current debilitated and even decrepit state, it fears no rivals.
But maybe that is really not the point. Maybe economic systems can die without actually being killed by other competing systems. “How will capitalism end?” is the title of a brilliant book by the German thinker Wolfgang Streeck. (Verso, London 2016, published in India by Juggernaut Books.) It provides a cogent and persuasive critique of the nature of contemporary capitalism, and describes its ongoing extended demise, without surrendering to any optimism that as it fails to deliver even in terms of its own logic, all the nastiness and injustice it has generated must inevitably change for the better.
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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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