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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***Dow Companies Report Worst Revenues since 2010, Dow Rises to 20,000 (LOL?) – Wolf Richter
29 januari
The Dow-20,000 hats have come out of the drawer after an agonizingly long wait that had commenced in early December with the Dow Jones Industrial Average tantalizingly close to the sacred number before the selling started all over again.
What a ride it has been. From the beginning of 2011 through January 27, 2017, so a little more than six years, the DJIA has soared 73%, from 11,577 to 20,094. Glorious!!
But when it comes to revenues of the 30 Dow component companies – a reality that is harder to doctor than ex-bad-items adjusted earnings-per-share hyped by Wall Street – the picture turns morose.
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Trump Cuts Subsidy to Real Estate Industry, Opponents Call It a “Tax Increase” – Ryan McMaken
25 januari
Among the many new directives and executive orders already issued by the Trump administration is a little-noticed order to halt a scheduled cut in mortgage insurance fees levied by the FHA.
Earlier in January, the Obama administration announced it would cut the FHA’s insurance premium by a quarter of a percentage point to 0.60 percent, effective on Jan. 27.
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Trade War Threat Grows – Jomo Kwame Sundaram
27 januari
New American President Donald Trump has long insisted that the United States has been suffering from poor trade deals made by his predecessors. Renegotiating or withdrawing from these deals will be top priority for his administration which views trade policy as key to US economic revival under Trump. What will that mean?
The new administration promises ‘tough and fair agreements’ on trade, ostensibly to revive the US economy and to create millions of mainly manufacturing jobs. The POTUS is committed to renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), signed in 1994 by the United States, Canada and Mexico. And if NAFTA partners refuse what the White House deems to be a ‘fair’ renegotiated agreement, “the President will give notice of the United States’ intent to withdraw from NAFTA”.
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Corporate Tax – John H. Cochrane
26 januari
My view: the corporate tax should be zero. Not just a zero rate, but the tax should be abolished. Lowering a rate is just an invitation to renegotiation, and a quick raise when the next party takes over. Lowering a rate keeps all the lobbyists around to keep all the exemptions going. To reduce a tax, you must follow the advice of a zombie movie — kill it, and drive a stake through its heart. Burn the code, delete it from the hard drive.
In my best guess, the tax is entirely really paid by consumers in higher prices and workers in lower wages. However, it works best only with a shift to a consumption tax (progressive if you wish) on individuals.
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Deflation Probability Drops to 0% for Next Five Years – Wolf Richter
26 januari
The scourge of consumer price deflation has been brandished furiously by central banks around the world in order to justify radical, scorched-earth monetary policies, including zero-interest-rate policy (ZIRP), the entire absurdity of negative-interest-rate policy (NIRP), and asset purchases not only of government bonds but also of everything else, depending on the central bank, including corporate bonds, stocks, asset-backed securities, and, as German politician Frank Schäffler predicted with uncanny accuracy back in September 2011, “old bicycles.”
Central banks have also brandished the threat of other mayhem that could befall the earth if it weren’t for those policies, but the threat of consumer price deflation has played a critical role.
Well, those of you in the US, don’t worry: your overall prices, as determined by the Consumer Price Index, now have exactly 0% chance of dropping over the next five years, down from a probability of 14.1% in May last year.
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Evidence from forecasters on which aspects of central bank transparency matter – Anna Naszodi, Csaba Csavas, Szilard Erhart, Daniel Felcser
27 januari
There is a notable lack of consensus about how central bank transparency affects uncertainty in the economy, as well as how transparency should be measured. This column reviews some recent contributions that highlight how transparency does not have consistent and unambiguous effects on economic uncertainty. Despite this ambiguity, transparency seems to be more often favourable than unfavourable.
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Collateral frameworks: The open secret of central banks – Kjell G. Nyborg
24 januari
Central banks inject money into the economy against collateral, but we know little about the terms of the exchange. This column argues that market forces or discipline have little role to play in the central bank collateral frameworks that are the foundation of the monetary and financial system. This distorts the financial system and wider economy – in the Eurozone, for example, political influence on these frameworks has created indirect bailouts of some banks and sovereigns.
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Assessing the threat to central bank independence – Jakob de Haan, Sylvester Eijffinger
27 januari
It has been observed that since the start of the Global Crisis, central banks in most advanced economies have become more powerful and political, but they have not become more accountable. This column discusses why central bank independence matters, and looks at whether it has changed since the crisis.
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***ECB’s Insider Connections Under Scrutiny Again – Don Quijones
25 januari
Just months after chastising former European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso for accepting an “advisory” role with Goldman Sachs, EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has a new job on her hands: investigating the close ties ECB President Mario Draghi and aides have with private banks. The inquiry, launched after a complaint lodged by the NGO Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), will delve into Draghi’s membership of the Group of Thirty, a secretive forum of influential finance executives, academics, and policy makers.
“CEO research has exposed a severe lack of critical distance between the ECB’s decision-making bodies and corporate bankers in the G30,” the NGO said. “Our study shows that high-level employees of the ECB are far too close to the representatives of the banks they supervise and that the information they transmit at the G30 meetings is out of control,” asserted Kenneth Haar, a member of CEO.
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Federal Reserve Bankers Mocked Unemployed Americans Behind Closed Doors – Mat Stoller
27 januari
In 2011, unemployment was at a near crisis level. The jobless rate was stuck around 9 percent nationally, an unusually high number due to the continuing effects of the financial crash.
House Democrats were aghast. “With almost five unemployed Americans for every job opening, too many people remain jobless because of a lack of work, not a lack of wanting to work,” said Congressman Lloyd Doggett, D-Tex. So in early November 2011, they introduced a bill to reauthorize Federal unemployment benefits, an insurance program designed to aide those looking for work.
Behind closed doors at the Federal Reserve however, the conversation struck a different tone.
The Federal Reserve’s mandate is to promote “maximum employment,” which essentially means: print enough money so that everyone who wants one has a job. Yet according to transcripts released this month after the traditional five-year waiting period, Federal Reserve officials in November 2011 were debating whether unemployment was caused by bad work ethics and drug use – rather than by the greatest financial crisis in 80 years. This debate then factored into the argument over setting monetary policy.
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Can Technology Prevent a Recession? – Frank Shostak
23 januari
The world has come a long way since the heady days before the Great Depression of the 1930s. Technology, for one thing, has meant vast changes to our way of life and indeed to significant improvements in our economic productivity. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that these technological advances now make us depression-proof.
Of course, the same line of reasoning — vast improvements in technology over successive decades making the world immune to massive slumps — could have been made before the 1930s. Yet a more careful analysis would reveal that the real issue in examining whether economies are prone to significant downturns are not related to technology but rather to the allocation or misallocation of resources.
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Why Unwinding The Fed’s Balance Sheet Could Get Messy – Tyler Durden
28 januari
With former Fed chair Ben Bernanke becoming the latest academic to opine on the potential unwind of the Fed’s balance sheet last week (naturally, he was against it realizing the potentially dire implications such a move could have on asset prices), here is the same topic as viewed from the perspective of an actual trader, in this case FX strategist (who writes for Bloomberg) Vincent Cignarella, and who believes that “unwinding the Fed’s balance sheet could get messy.”
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***Free Trade versus “Free Trade” – Peter G. Klein
23 januari
NPR featured an unintentionally funny piece this morning on Donald Trump’s views toward the EU and free trade. The guest, former US ambassador to the EU Anthony Gardner, rightfully criticized the president’s view that “protection will lead to great prosperity and strength,” and called for continued global engagement by US companies and consumers. But he revealed, perhaps inadvertently, what political actors mean by “free trade.”
Specifically, Gardner expressed great skepticism towards the prospect of the US striking a bilateral free-trade deal with the UK, supposedly one of Trump’s top objectives in his upcoming meeting with new Prime Minister Theresa May. Free-trade agreements are complex, Gardner informed us, and negotiating one will be neither easy nor quick.
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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.