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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Here’s Why All Pension Funds Are Doomed, Doomed, Doomed – Charles Hugh Smith
27 mei
There are limits on what the Fed can do when this bubble bursts, as it inevitably will, as surely as night follows day.
It’s no secret that virtually every pension fund is dead man walking, doomed by central banks’ imposition of low yields on safe investments, i.e. Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP).
Given that both The Economist and The Wall Street Journal have covered the impossibility of pension funds achieving their expected returns, this reality cannot be a surprise to anyone in a leadership role.
Many unhappy returns: Pension funds and endowments are too optimistic
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Don’t Listen To The Ruling Elite, The World Economy Is In Real Trouble – Andy Xie
2 maart
The G20 working group meeting in Shanghai didn’t come up with any constructive proposals for reviving the global economy and, instead, complained that the recent market turmoil didn’t reflect the “underlying fundamentals of the global economy”. The oil price has declined by 70 per cent since June 2014, while the Brazilian real has halved, and the Russian rouble is down by 60 per cent. The global economy is on the cusp of another recession, and these important people blamed it all on some sort of psychological problem of the people.
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*** The Banking Crisis in Spain is Back – Don Quijones
28 mei
After three years of relative calm and one month before yet another round of do-or-die general elections, the words “banking” and “crisis” are back on the front pages of Spain’s newspapers. Despite the untold billions of euros of public funds lavished on “cleaning up” their balance sheets and the roughly €240 billion of provisions booked against bad debt since December 2007, the banks are just as weak and disaster-prone as they were four years ago.
Francisco González, the President of Spain’s second biggest financial institution, BBVA, was the first to raise the alarm, warning a few days ago that the ECB’s negative interest rate policy “is killing” European banks.
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What Would Ludwig von Mises Do in Venezuela? – Tho Bishop
26 mei
The crisis in Venezuela is the most modern illustration of the horrific consequences of socialism and the devastating reality of hyperinflation. What makes this disaster all the more infuriating is that it could have been avoided with a basic understanding of history. We’ve seen the disaster of socialism and interventionism in various forms play out across the world time and time again with similar results, and yet new generations of central planners — backed by ideologically aligned intellectuals — are consistently able to fool people into believing that “this time will be different.”
Ludwig von Mises himself lived through one of these historical episodes.
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How bank networks amplify financial crises: Evidence from the Great Depression – Kris James Mitchener , Gary Richardson
28 mei
The Global Crisis emphasised the fragility of international financial networks. Despite this, there has been little historical research into how networks propagate financial shocks. This column explores how interbank networks transmitted liquidity shocks through the US banking system during the Great Depression. During banking panics, the pyramided-structure of reserves forced troubled banks to reduce lending, thus amplifying the decline in investment spending.
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*** Manufacturing Recession Goes Global as Demand Withers – Wolf Richter
24 mei
The “strong dollar” has been blamed for the manufacturing doldrums in the US that started over a year ago. But then manufacturing in other countries should boom, or at least not decline, but that’s not the case. Manufacturing is sick and weakening in just about every major economy!
References to 2009 and the Global Financial Crisis keep popping up in the latest spate of reports because that’s how bad it has gotten.
US manufacturing gets ugly.
On Monday, Markit reported that its US Manufacturing PMI, which tracks the overall health of the manufacturing sector via surveys sent to purchasing managers, dropped to 50.5 (below 50 = contraction) in May, the weakest reading since October 2009.
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Comparative advantage in manufacturing: A look back at the late Victorian ‘workshop of the world’ – Brian Varian
29 mei
Modern discussions about a country’s ‘decline in manufacturing’ are seldom meaningful. Such talk of industrialisation and deindustrialisation across the entire sector tends to ignore important variation across individual industries. This column draws lessons from the revealed comparative advantage of late-Victorian Britain – the ‘workshop of the world’. Advantage lay mainly in industries that were relatively capital-intensive and that didn’t rely on large pools of unskilled labour. Despite its resource wealth, even Britain in the first era of globalisation was at a measurable comparative disadvantage in a number of industries.
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Why the global trade slowdown may matter – Cristina Constantinescu, Aaditya Mattoo, Michele Ruta
25 mei
Trade has been growing more slowly since the Great Recession not only because global GDP growth is lower, but also because trade itself has become less responsive to GDP. The causes of the changing trade-income relationship have been studied, but its consequences have not. This column presents a simple framework to assess some of the demand-side and supply-side implications. The change hurts growth, although the quantifiable effects are not large.
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We’re in the Eye of a Global Financial Hurricane – Charles Hugh Smith
23 mei
The only “growth” we’re experiencing are the financial cancers of systemic risk and financialization’s soaring wealth/income inequality.
The Keynesian gods have failed, and as a result we’re in the eye of a global financial hurricane.
The Keynesian god of growth has failed.
The Keynesian god of borrowing from the future to fund today’s consumption has failed.
The Keynesian god of monetary stimulus / financialization has failed.
Every major central bank and state worships these Keynesian idols:
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Innovation and restrictions on insider trading – Ross Levine, Chen Lin, Lai Wei
27 mei
Economic theory offers conflicting perspectives on the relationship between insider trading and innovation. To date, the empirical evidence is similarly inconclusive. This column exploits the staggered enforcement of inside trading laws across countries to explore the effect on patenting behaviour. The findings point to a robust positive effect of enforcement on various measures of patenting behaviour. Legal systems that protect outside investors from corporate insiders thus help to foster innovation.
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Keynes must die – Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.
26 mei
In 2012, Barack Obama warned that the United States would fall into a depression if Ron Paul’s plan to cut $1 trillion from the federal budget were enacted.
Wait, I beg your pardon. It wasn’t Obama who warned that budget cuts would lead to a depression.
It was Mitt Romney.
Romney went on to become the nominee of the self-described free-market party.
An ideological rout is complete when both sides of respectable opinion take its basic ideas for granted. That’s how complete the Keynesian victory has been.
In fact, Keynesianism had swept the boards a decade before Romney was even born.
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Stock Share Buybacks Now Bought Out — American Enterprise in Decline – David Haggith
21 mei
I have pointed out in previous articles how most of the growth in stocks over the past few years has been due to stock share buybacks. Without this hideous (and at one time illegal) practice, there would have been no bull market over the last few years.
That’s right. Research from no other place than Wall Street, itself, indicates that almost all of the returns since 2009 have been due to stock share buybacks!
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These Crisis Markets Got Crushed… Time to Get in? – Casey research
25 mei
Spittler, editor of The Daily Dispatch: What are some of your most successful crisis investments?
Nick Giambruno: In 2013, the tiny European island of Cyprus had a banking crisis. Its stock market plunged 98%. It was one of the most significant financial crises in recent memory.
So Doug Casey and I packed our suitcases and boarded a plane for Cyprus. We put our “boots to the ground” and looked through the rubble for incredible bargains.
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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.