Helicopter QE will never be reversed … Readers of the Daily Telegraph were right all along. Quantitative easing will never be reversed. It is not liquidity management as claimed so vehemently at the outset. It really is the same as printing money. It would be better for central banks to put the money into railways, bridges, clean energy, smart grids, or whatever does most to regenerate the e...Read More
Stagnant Wages and Speculation Triggered the Crisis … There's been a lot of debate about just what is at the root of the current economic crisis. Some people have called it a banking crisis. Some people have called it a regulatory crisis. Some people are trying to say it's a debt crisis. Well, there's another line of thought, which is: the underlying issue is that in fact it'...Read More
Why a BA is Now a Ticket to A Job in a Coffee Shop …There's a growing perception out there that a college degree no longer delivers the value that it used to. Too many college kids are living in Mom's basement, or working at Starbucks. Like most personal finance columnists, I get the letters from them: what do I do? How do I fix this? For many, the answer is grad school. But I get th...Read More
This December will mark the 100th anniversary of the opening of the Federal Reserve. As we have seen in recent years, there is no institution of economic policy with more power and less transparency than the Fed. The Fed has almost never been held accountable for how it has performed. We have simply assumed that we need a central bank and trusted those in charge to make the right decisions. But th...Read More
Helicopter QE will never be reversed … Readers of the Daily Telegraph were right all along. Quantitative easing will never be reversed. It is not liquidity management as claimed so vehemently at the outset. It really is the same as printing money. It would be better for central banks to put the money into railways, bridges, clean energy, smart grids, or whatever does most to regenerate the e...Read More
Stagnant Wages and Speculation Triggered the Crisis … There's been a lot of debate about just what is at the root of the current economic crisis. Some people have called it a banking crisis. Some people have called it a regulatory crisis. Some people are trying to say it's a debt crisis. Well, there's another line of thought, which is: the underlying issue is that in fact it'...Read More
Why a BA is Now a Ticket to A Job in a Coffee Shop …There's a growing perception out there that a college degree no longer delivers the value that it used to. Too many college kids are living in Mom's basement, or working at Starbucks. Like most personal finance columnists, I get the letters from them: what do I do? How do I fix this? For many, the answer is grad school. But I get th...Read More
Even the tepid post-2008 recovery has not been what it was cracked up to be, especially with respect to the Wall Street presumption that the American consumer would once again function as the engine of GDP growth. It goes without saying, in fact, that the precarious plight of the Main Street consumer has been obfuscated by the manner in which the state's unprecedented fiscal and monetary medic...Read More
David Stockman and the cult of gloom … We think of spring as a time of cherry blossoms and renewed hope, as we slough off the depths of winter and ease into the warmer months. These bright days seem a strange time to encounter the by-now widely circulated warnings of impending doom by Ronald Reagan's budget director, and current gadfly, David Stockman. In a long essay in the New York Tim...Read More
BRICS Regimes Forge New World Bank, Call for Global Currency … The governments and dictatorships ruling over the so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — agreed to set up a new world bank that analysts say could further marginalize the increasingly unstable U.S. dollar, possibly helping to eventually dethrone it as the global reserve currency....Read More
Economic Crisis Hits the Netherlands … The Netherlands, Berlin's most important ally in pushing for greater budgetary discipline in Europe, has fallen into an economic crisis itself. The once exemplary economy is suffering from huge debts and a burst real estate bubble, which has stalled growth and endangered jobs. – Der SpiegelDominant Social Theme: Northern Europe is doing really...Read More
Britain's debt mountain reaches £1.39TRILLION, equivalent to 90% of the entire economy, ONS reveals … Gross debt at the end of 2012 stood at £1.387trillion, up 7% on 2011 Vast sum is equivalent to 90% of GDP – up from38% a decade ago Figures used to compare UK to the rest of Europe Mounting debts reveal the devastating impact of the 2007 crash … Britain's debt...Read More
Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit … The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place. President Obam...Read More
The Washington Post's Ezra Klein and Neil Irwin of WonkBlog discuss central banking policy after the financial crisis and the opposing views about its role in the state of the economy. – The Washington PostDominant Social Theme: Nothing is wrong with what we have now.Free-Market Analysis: We must make a confession: We didn't read David Stockman's article in the New York Times unt...Read More
Even the tepid post-2008 recovery has not been what it was cracked up to be, especially with respect to the Wall Street presumption that the American consumer would once again function as the engine of GDP growth. It goes without saying, in fact, that the precarious plight of the Main Street consumer has been obfuscated by the manner in which the state's unprecedented fiscal and monetary medic...Read More
David Stockman and the cult of gloom … We think of spring as a time of cherry blossoms and renewed hope, as we slough off the depths of winter and ease into the warmer months. These bright days seem a strange time to encounter the by-now widely circulated warnings of impending doom by Ronald Reagan's budget director, and current gadfly, David Stockman. In a long essay in the New York Tim...Read More
BRICS Regimes Forge New World Bank, Call for Global Currency … The governments and dictatorships ruling over the so-called BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — agreed to set up a new world bank that analysts say could further marginalize the increasingly unstable U.S. dollar, possibly helping to eventually dethrone it as the global reserve currency....Read More
Economic Crisis Hits the Netherlands … The Netherlands, Berlin's most important ally in pushing for greater budgetary discipline in Europe, has fallen into an economic crisis itself. The once exemplary economy is suffering from huge debts and a burst real estate bubble, which has stalled growth and endangered jobs. – Der SpiegelDominant Social Theme: Northern Europe is doing really...Read More
Britain's debt mountain reaches £1.39TRILLION, equivalent to 90% of the entire economy, ONS reveals … Gross debt at the end of 2012 stood at £1.387trillion, up 7% on 2011 Vast sum is equivalent to 90% of GDP – up from38% a decade ago Figures used to compare UK to the rest of Europe Mounting debts reveal the devastating impact of the 2007 crash … Britain's debt...Read More
Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit … The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place. President Obam...Read More