Finanskrisen 2007 -
RBS has advised clients to brace for a “cataclysmic year” and a global deflationary crisis,
warning that major stock markets could fall by a fifth and oil may plummet to $16 a barrel.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 11 Jan 2016
“Fangs” — Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google
As with the first Shanghai Surprise, the stark reaction to this week’s Chinese events reveals deep lack of confidence in the health of the western corporate sector.
Even if the situation now stabilises — as it did for several months back in 2007 —
the message of concern, in both west and east, is clear.
John Authers, FT 8 January 2016
One of the (many) fascinating things about this latest global financial crisis is that there’s no single catalyst.
Unlike 2008 when the carnage could be traced back to US subprime housing, or 2000 when tech stocks crashed and pulled down everything else,
this time around a whole bunch of seemingly-unrelated things are unraveling all at once.
zerohedge 7 January 2016
Submitted by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com
Interest rates, for instance, were high by current standards at the beginning of past crises, which gave central banks plenty of leeway to comfort the afflicted with big rate cut announcements.
Today rates are near zero in most places and negative in many.
Full text
Top of page
News
A Year of Sovereign Defaults?
Carmen Reinhart, Project Syndicate 31 December 2015
Like so many other features of the global economy, debt accumulation and default tends to occur in cycles. Since 1800, the global economy has endured several such cycles, with the share of independent countries undergoing restructuring during any given year oscillating between zero and 50%
The most recent default cycle includes the emerging-market debt crises of the 1980s and 1990s. Most countries resolved their external-debt problems by the mid-1990s, but a substantial share of countries in the lowest-income group remain in chronic arrears with their official creditors.
Read more at https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/sovereign-default-wave-emerging-markets-by-carmen-reinhart-2015-12#z8IKDElycECkDZ8Q.99
Welcome, then, to what Carmen Reinhart, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington,
and Harvard’s Kenneth Rogoff call “the second great contraction” (the Great Depression of the 1930s being the first).
Den stora paniken 1873, som ledde till den långa depressionen 1873–96.
Waldemar Ingdahl, SvD Understreckare 13 februari 2009
1873 års ”stora panik” hade sin grund i den osäkra politiska strukturen i Europa.
I det ombildade Österrike-Ungern, det nyligen enade Tyskland och i det åter republikanska Frankrike, stödde staten uppkomsten av en ny typ av kreditinstitut som utfärdade inteckningar i det kommunala bostadsbyggandet för sämre bemedlade.
Det var lätt att låna, och en stor byggboom inleddes. Tomtvärdena verkade ständigt fortsätta stiga.
Det var operahusens, wienerbalernas, boulevardernas och de magnifika byggprojektens tid. Europa hade börjat ta tillväxten för given när kraschen kom.
Full text
Other crashes
Top of page
News
The S&P 500 finished 2015 with a loss of 0.7 per cent,
its worst annual performance since the financial crisis in 2008 when it declined 38.5 per cent.
Financial Times 31 December 2015
Getting economies "back to normal" was always the hope during that remarkable time when the financial system was in danger of going bust.
I'm not sure anyone thought that, eight years on, we would still be in a near zero interest rate world.
Or, in cases such as the eurozone, a negative interest rate world.
Kamal Ahmed, BBC Business editor, 16 December 2015
Central banks around the world slashed interest rates to near zero and created billions of pounds of support for governments and the wider economy.
Full text
Top of page
News
As every student of recent economic history will know, the first rumble of thunder in the Global Financial Crisis came with the collapse in the summer of 2007 of two large Bear Stearns hedge funds.
Investors demanded their money back, but managers were unable to liquidate their positions fast enough to deliver.
Jeremy Warner, Telegraph 15 December 2015
These early signs of panic were to snowball into an all-embracing run on the global banking system, forcing central banks to flood the market with cheap liquidity to prevent mass liquidation and economic collapse.
Are we about to see history repeat itself?
Full text
Frozen withdrawals in 2007 and 2015
Rolf Englund blog 2015-12-12
Doom
A day after a prominent Wall Street firm shocked investors by freezing withdrawals from a credit mutual fund, things only got nastier in the junk-bond market.
Prices on the high-risk securities sank to levels not seen in six years and, to add to the growing sense of alarm,
billionaire investor Carl Icahn said the selloff is only starting.
Bloomberg 11 December 2015
“The meltdown in High Yield is just beginning," Icahn, who’s been betting against the high-yield market, wrote on his verified Twitter account Friday.
Full text
Top of page
News
US and Europe still live with the legacies of the financial crisis of 2007-09 and the subsequent eurozone crisis.
Could better policies have prevented that outcome; and, if so, what might they have been?
Martin Wolf, FT 10 November 2015
A recovery is under way, but only in a limited sense. The change in gross domestic product of crisis-hit countries is now almost universally positive.
But GDP remains far below what might have been expected from pre-crisis trends.
This raises two further questions: could the adverse impact of the crisis have been smaller? And can it still be reversed?
The answer to the first must be yes. But it would have required stronger fiscal and monetary responses, and more aggressive restructuring of damaged financial institutions.
The eurozone, in particular, should have done far better.
Full text
Top of page
News
Some people never learn. They follow the same path that destroyed their finances in the past.
Wall Street is desperately packaging the increasing amounts of subprime slime in new derivatives of mass destruction and peddling them to clients, while shorting those same derivatives.
It’s called the Goldman Sachs method. When home prices begin to tumble, these derivatives will self-destruct again.
What is happening today is nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
zerohedge 25 September 2015
The table is set for the next financial crisis. The apologists for the warped ideology that has resulted in $10 trillion of additional debt being layered on the original un-payable $52 trillion, argue subprime lending is lower than the 2008 peak, so all is well.
They fail to realize the system is far more fragile and will collapse once the next Lehman moment arrives. The country is already in, or headed into recession.
All economic indicators are flashing red. The stock market has fallen over 10% in the last month. Virtually every new car owner you see driving that fancy BMW, Lexus, or Volvo is underwater on their auto loan.
Home price growth has stalled at record levels. Mortgage rates are poised to rise from record lows. We all know what happens next. Look out below.
Full text
Top of page
News
Turbulence in financial markets gathered momentum amid intensifying concern over slowing global growth,
pushing the Dow Jones Industrial Average into a correction and giving other stock gauges their worse losses since 2011.
21 August 2015
Lord Skidelsky said that Keynes would have found two things upsetting.
First, he would be frustrated with the lack of precautions taken to prevent a huge financial crash like the one we saw in 2008.
Secondly, Lord Skidelsky believes Keynes wouldn't be happy with the policy measures taken after the crash. Keynes would have wanted a more "buoyant response," he said.
Specifically, he doesn't think Keynes would have liked the Federal Reserve's quantitative easing
BloombergTV, 13 August 2015
… the recovery has been very very slow. We've been for many years in a state of semi-stagnation, and the recovery is still very very weak in the European Union.
The actual recovery measures we've taken, particularly quantitative easing, have actually skewed the recovery towards asset buying and real estate,
thus threatening to recreate the circumstances that led to crash in the first place.
Full text
Keynes
Rolf Englund;
Själv brukar jag med en dåres envishet upprepa följande ord, första gången den 5 december 2009:
Jag tycker det är skriande uppenbart att räntan världen över är för låg och att en större del av stimulanserna borde ske via finanspolitiken.
Top of page
News
One of the things that occurred to me is the consequence of the 2008 crisis.
I knew something was brewing, but I missed the actual date as frankly did everybody else.
Alan Greenspan, Telegraph 10 August 2015
Explainer: Puerto Rico’s debt problems
FT June 29, 2015
How did a small island of just 3.5m people manage to amass $70bn of debts,
as well as a pile of unfunded pension liabilities?
Full text
Top of page
News
Monetary policymakers have run out of room to fight the next crisis
with interest rates unable to go lower, the BIS warns
Telegraph 28 June 2015
The so-called central bank of central banks launched a scatching critique of global monetary policy in its annual report.
The BIS claimed that central banks have backed themselves into a corner after repeatedly cutting interest rates to shore up their economies.
These low interest rates have in turn fuelled economic booms, encouraging excessive risk taking.
Booms have then turned to busts, which policymakers have responded to with even lower rates.
Full text
Jag tycker det är skriande uppenbart att räntan världen över är för låg och att en större del av stimulanserna borde ske via finanspolitiken.
Men väljarna och därmed deras medlöpande politiker är rädda för budgetunderskott och vill hellre att villaägarna skall låna än att staten skall göra det.
Strategin synes vara att det gäller att stabilisera, helst höja, villapriserna så att konsumenterna främst i USA skall återgå till att konsumera med lånta pengar, dvs just det som ledde fram till katastrofen.
Detta kan inte vara klokt.
Rolf Englund blog 5 december 2009
Top of page
News
Output is financially sustainable when spending patterns and the distribution of income are such that the fruit of economic activity can be absorbed without creating dangerous imbalances in the financial system.
It is unsustainable if generating enough demand to absorb the output of the economy requires too much borrowing, real rates of interest rates that are far below zero, or both.
Martin Wolf, FT 14 April 2015
Full text
Top of page
Next Bubble Is Forming: U.S. Government Bonds
Martin Wolf at IntCom
News
We May Be Facing a Textbook Emerging-Market Crisis
Argentina and Turkey look like outliers but the rot could spread fast.
Satyajit Das Bloomberg 3 september 2018
Do eerie parallels presage new crisis?
Falling oil, rising dollar and US rate rise fears also present in 1997-98
Satyajit Das, FT February 23, 2015
Weak growth, high debt levels, disinflation or deflation, policy driven destructive competitive devaluations, inflated financial risk taking and mispricing compounds the problems.
The impending crisis may develop as follows.
Full text
A future crisis is likely to unfold as follows.
Satyajit Das, FT October 29, 2014
Central banks have created the illusion of calm. It won't last.
Satyajit Das, Bloomberg 3 januari 2018
The biggest debt write-offs in the history of the world
In 1792BC, the self-proclaimed King Hammurabi of Babylon forgave all citizens’ debts owed to the government, high-ranking officials, and dignitaries.
If any one owe a debt for a loan, and a storm prostrates the grain, or the harvest fail, or the grain does not growth for lack of water,
in that year he need not give his creditor any grain, he washes his debt-tablet in water and pays no rent for this year.
Hammourabi’s jubilees were part of a long line of debt cancellations that can be traced back to Mesopotamia as long ago as 2400BC.
Mehreen Khan, Telegraph, 2 Feb 2015
Following the end of WWII, the London Debt Agreement of 1953 saw the abolition of all of Germany's external debt.
The total forgiveness amounted to around 280pc of GDP from 1947-53, according to historian Albrecht Ritschl.
Full text
Crashes
The U.S. dollar, at its highest level in nine years, is about to fall off its perch.
That’s the outlook, at least, of Lawrence G. McDonald, n his New York Times best-seller, “A Colossal Failure of Common Sense,” warned colleagues at Lehman Brothers
Energy companies took out $1.6 trillion worth of debt since 2009. Since 2012, emerging market governments and companies have taken out around $2 trillion worth of debt.
The catch here is that they often borrowed in dollars.
MarketWatch 7 january 2015
Top of page
The US Federal Reserve has pulled the trigger. Emerging markets must now brace for their ordeal by fire.
They have collectively borrowed $5.7 trillion in US dollars, a currency they cannot print and do not control.
This hard-currency debt has tripled in a decade, split between $3.1 trillion in bank loans and $2.6 trillion in bonds.
It is comparable in scale and ratio-terms to any of the biggest cross-border lending sprees of the past two centuries.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 17 Dec 2014
Full text
The Fed put
Federal Reserve uttered the single word “patience” and everything changed.
On Wednesday the stock market rose 2 per cent and on Thursday the Dow Jones Industrial index had its best day in three years.
The market dependence on Fed policy has never seemed greater
Financial Times December 19, 2014
The lights are again flashing red on the dashboard of the world economy, David Cameron warned yesterday.
Just to extend the metaphor, the plane is flying on empty, having pretty much exhausted its fiscal and monetary reserves,
and there is no sign of a safe landing strip in sight.
Jeremy Warner, Telegraph, 18 Nov 2014
Finanskriskommittén
Riksgäldens garantiprogram för bankerna infördes 2008.
Sammanlagt ställdes bankgarantier för 354 miljarder kronor.
SvD Näringsliv 18 november 2014
Finanskrisen
Martin Wolf på Financial Times är, vågar jag påstå, den världsledande journalisten på området finansiell ekonomi.
När han analyserar den globala finanskris som fortfarande pågår lyssnar alla som vill förstå.
Nils Lundgren, Axess Magasin nr 8, november 2014
Wolf konstaterar att bara sedan 1980 har vi drabbats av sex stora finanskriser som har skakat världsekonomin:
den latinamerikanska krisen (tidigt 1980-tal), den japanska krisen (tidigt 1990-tal), Tequilakrisen (inleddes i Mexiko 1994), den ostasiatiska krisen (1997–1999), den globala finanskrisen (2007–2009) och eurozonkrisen (2010–2013).
Därtill har det uppstått många finanskriser av mera begränsad och regional karaktär.
Den svenska finanskrisen 1990–1994 var mycket dramatisk och förändrade svensk ekonomi och politik på ett genomgripande sätt.
Enligt en IMF-rapport från 2012 inträffade inte mindre 147 bankkriser under perioden 1970–2011.
Det är uppenbart att den globala finanssektorn är extremt instabil och att
de realekonomiska kostnaderna för dessa finanskriser i form av förlorad produktion, arbetslöshet och kapitalförluster är enorma.
Något är i grunden fel!
Wolfs bok handlar om de två senaste kriserna på listan.
Full text
Ja till EU - nej till EMU?
Huvudpunkter i Nils Lundgrens föredragning i Helsingfors inför riksdagens utrikesutskott den 21 september 1994
Ja, det var 1994 och det håller än
In my book, The Shifts and the Shocks, I suggest that a number of shifts in the world economy
created chronically weak demand in the absence of credit booms.
US, the eurozone, Japan and the UK have been suffering from “chronic demand deficiency syndrome”.
More precisely, their private sectors have failed to spend enough to bring output close to its potential
without the inducements of ultra-aggressive monetary policies, large fiscal deficits, or both.
Martin Wolf, FT November 25, 2014
What happens then is a “balance-sheet recession” – a period when the indebted focus on paying down debt
Still more unorthodox is outright monetary financing of fiscal deficits,
as Adair Turner, former chairman of the UK’s Financial Services Authority, has recommended.
This means nationalising the creation of money now delegated to often-irresponsible private banks.
Full text
Martin Wolf
Today’s most important economic illness: chronic demand deficiency syndrome.
David Cameron “red warning lights are once again flashing on the dashboard of the global economy”.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times 18 november 2014
RE: The best book I have ever read
In my book The Shifts and the Shocks, I argue that pre-crisis trends
– huge global current account imbalances, rising inequality and weak propensity to invest –
had already created weak underlying demand in high-income countries.
The de facto response of policy makers was toleration, if not promotion, of credit booms.
When these collapsed, extraordinary policy easing was needed both to replace the lost demand impetus from the credit bubbles and to
offset the drag on demand from debt overhangs, predominantly in private sectors:
too many people had borrowed too much.
Martin Wolf, FT October 9, 2014
The Germans have a name for their unique economic framework: ordoliberalism.
Wolfgang Münchau FT 16 November 2014
List of economic crises
Wikipedia
Eevery Fed tightening cycle has brought a financial crisis. Here is the list.
Chad Hudson March 2, 2005
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, especially when it comes to explaining market crashes.
The glaringly obvious guide to the next crash
James Mackintosh, FT September 21, 2014
The financial crises and the years of economic malaise that followed represent profound failures of the economy and of policy.
Above all, they were failures of understanding.
We have learnt much since. But we have not learnt enough to avoid a repeat of this painful experience.
As I argue in a new book, we retain unbalanced and financially fragile economies.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, September 3, 2014
Those in charge saw little danger in the rapid growth of credit; they were largely unconcerned by rising leverage; they thought financial innovation added to rather than reduced stability;
and they believed it was easier to clean up after asset-price bubbles burst than to prevent them from growing in the first place.
On all this they were proved wrong, as the late and disregarded Hyman Minsky had sought to warn them.
The new regulatory regime is an astonishingly complex response to the failures of this model.
But “keep it simple, stupid” is as good a rule in regulation as it is in life.
The sensible solution seems clear: force banks to fund themselves with equity to a far greater extent than they do today.
Full text
Martin Wolf, The Shifts and the Shocks: What We’ve Learned – and Have Still to Learn – from the Financial Crisis
Martin Wolf
Glass-Steagall Act
Economic theory discredited
One of the United States’ defining – and disheartening – economic trends over the last 40 years has been
real-wage stagnation for most workers.
Median full-time male worker earned $50,033 in 2013,
barely distinguishable from the comparable (inflation-adjusted) figure of $49,678 in 1973.
Laura Tyson, Project Syndicate, 26 September 2014
Because most households earn the bulk of their income from their labor, the absence of real-wage growth is a major factor behind the stagnation of family incomes. The average family income of the bottom 90% of households has been flat since about 1980. Real family income for the median household in 2013 was 8% below its 2007 level and nearly 9% below its 1999 peak.
Stagnating middle-class wages and family incomes are a major factor behind the US economy’s slow recovery from the 2007-2009 recession, and pose a serious threat to long-term growth and competitiveness. Household consumption accounts for more than two-thirds of aggregate demand, and consumption growth depends on income growth for the bottom 90%.
Read more here
Marian Radetzki, unemployment and Stall Speed
The Greater Depression
First it was the 2007 financial crisis. Then it became the 2008 financial crisis.
Next it was the downturn of 2008-2009. Finally, in mid-2009, it was dubbed the “Great Recession.”
Late 2009, the world breathed a collective a sigh of relief. We would not, it was believed, have to move on to the next label,
which would inevitably contain the dreaded D-word. But...
J. Bradford DeLong, Project Syndicate, 28 august 2014
Read more here
Stabiliseringspolitik
The world is at risk of another financial crash following a steep rise in asset prices,
according to Raghuram Rajan, governor of the Reserve Bank of India
– and one of the few people to have warned of the last financial crisis.
FT 7 August 2014
UK house price growth has taken the multiple of average home values to
more than five times earnings for the first time since the financial crisis.
Telegraph 7 August 2014 with nice chart
Why We're Doomed: Interest and Debt
Charles Hugh Smith, July 15, 2014
Full text
BIS Slams the Fed
"A Controlled Collapse?"
I propose Yellen is clueless. If she had any sense, she would have acted in advance to prevent an asset bubble
or at least stall the one Bernanke had started.
The Fed is not going to attempt a controlled collapse.
Yet, a collapse is coming. It will be anything but controlled.
Mike "Mish" Shedlock, 11 July 2014
The Coming Liquidity Crisis
What was the cause of the last crisis? Everybody points to subprime debt, but that was really just a trigger.
What happened was that everybody in the financial world became distrustful of everybody else’s balance sheet
Dylan Grice and John Mauldin 7 July 2014
What was the cause of the last crisis? Everybody points to subprime debt, but that was really just a trigger.
What happened was that everybody in the financial world became distrustful of everybody else’s balance sheet
and so decided to go to cash, but there was so much debt and so much invested in illiquid assets that everybody couldn’t get out of the theater at the same time.
It is happening again today.
The intense drive for yield is driving down interest rates and volatility, pushing up assets of all kinds,
and setting us up for the same song, second verse of the 2008 crisis.
While I have been hinting around about that possibility for some time, it really crystallized for me this morning
as I was reading the latest “Popular Delusions” from Dylan Grice.
Let me quote a bit from the opening of his typically brilliant essay:
French ten-year bonds (OATS) are paying 1.7%. Spanish (2.68%) and Italian (2.83%) debt are paying roughly the equivalent of US debt. German debt, at 1.27%, pays less than half of US debt at 2.64%. Somewhere in that equation, sovereign debt is spectacularly mispriced. Rated ten-year corporate bonds are paying between 3% and 3.4%. That is less than a 1% premium for bonds that are only single-A. Seriously?
You should be thinking of cash not as cash per se, but as an option on future deep-value trades.
Full text
www.edelweissjournal.com/issues
Doom
The International Monetary Fund pointed out this month that housing can do a lot of damage.
An increase in prices provides an initial spur to the wider economy: construction activity is boosted and homeowners grow richer.
But as a boom continues, leverage grows and price rises become unsustainable.
The bursting of a bubble devastates bank balance sheets and leaves behind an economy that must painfully reallocate productive resources from a bloated construction industry to other sectors.
Mark Schieritz, economics correspondent of Die Zeit, Financial Times June 22, 2014
”Det kan vara årets viktigaste bok om ekonomi, det skulle kunna vara den viktigaste boken sedan finanskrisen.”
Det är inget dåligt beröm författarna Atif Mian och Amir Sufi får för sin bok 'House of debt' och berömmet kommer från ingen mindre än Larry Summers.
Louise Andrén Meiton, SvD Näringsliv 15 juni 2014
Lawrence Summers on ‘House of Debt’
Did the response to the financial crisis focus too much on banks while neglecting over-indebted homeowners?
Lawrence Summers, Financial Times June 6, 2014
Claudio Borio, the BIS's chief economist,
says this refusal to let the business cycle run its course and to purge bad debts is corrosive.
leads to "time inconsistency". It steals growth and prosperity from the future,
and pulls the interest rate structure far below its (Wicksellian) natural rate.
"The risk is that the global economy may be in a deceptively stable disequilibrium," he said.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 4 June 2014
Full text
Bubbles have three stages: expansionary; then contractionary; and,
finally, perhaps inflationary.
The world economy is now in the second stage.
That is why today's worry is deflation. But it is unlikely to stay there for ever.
Ultimately, efforts to ward off post-bubble deflation risk creating its opposite.
A more helpful guide is the Swedish-Austrian theory of the business cycle, developed by Knut Wicksell
Martin Wolf Financial Times 28/5 2003
Top of page
From March 2000 to the autumn of 2002,
the US stock market declined more than 40 per cent. Losses were a staggering $8tn.
The reason that the real economic effects of the collapse of internet stocks were well contained is that the internet bubble was not financed by debt
Contrast the situation that followed the collapse of real estate prices in 2007
after a period when the (inflation adjusted) prices of single family houses had doubled over the preceding decade.
Burton Malkiel, author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street, Financial Times 21 May 2014
Full text
Don't Sell Out
Burton G. Malkiel. Wall Street Journal 2001-09-26
A Random Walk Down Wall Street
Martin Hellwig ”The Bankers' New Clothes: What's Wrong with Banking and What to Do About It”
The 2008 crisis was made possible by an extremely fragile financial system
in which banks and many other businesses indulged in excessive leverage — too much borrowing — as well as hazardous reliance on short-term funding
and negligent risk management, with lax regulatory supervision by the government.
Roger E. Alcaly, The York Review of Books, 5 June 2014
The regulatory failures in the buildup to the recent crisis were induced by the same complacency that infected the financial system and economy
in the latter stages of the period economists call “the great moderation,” beginning in the early 1980s and spanning roughly two decades of relatively steady growth and low inflation,
interrupted only by recessions that were short and mild.
Full text
"This is the most important book to have come out of the financial crisis", Martin Wolf
Top of page
Are financial crises an inevitable feature of capitalism?
Must the government rescue the system when huge crises occur?
In his book Stress Test , Timothy Geithner answers “yes” to both questions.
Yet these answers also harm the legitimacy of a market economy.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 27 May 2014
It is bad enough if capitalism is crisis-prone.
It is worse still if the state feels obliged to rescue those whose folly or criminality caused the damage, to protect the innocent.
Mr Geithner argues not only that crises are sure to recur but that governments must react with overwhelming force.
The only way to stop a crisis is to remove the circumstances making it rational to panic.
Full text
"a how-to manual for anyone faced with a financial crisis"
Mr Geithner was known for his brutal candour, and as an author, he does not disappoint.
Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises
The Economist print 17 May 2014
At one meeting he realised that John Thain, Merrill Lynch’s chief, did not know the name of his chief risk officer who was sitting next to him.
In 2008 he had the right instinct. But taken too far, it affirms suspicions that many firms and markets are “too big to fail”
Full text
Tim Geithner
Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises, lunch with Martin Wolf
"the big persistent misperception is that we acted out of an excessive concern for the banks"
Financial Times 15 May 2014
In the 1990s, he worked on the Mexican and Asian crises.
As president of the New York Federal Reserve (2003 to January 2009) and then as President Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary (until January 2013),
he was at the centre of efforts to cope with the financial crisis that hit the US in 2007 and reached its peak a year later.
“to lean against the instinctive reactions people have in a normal crisis, which is to let it burn out, be indifferent to the failure of individual firms, or embrace austerity quickly.
And I think the big persistent misperception is that we acted out of an excessive concern for the banks rather than out of recognition that if you leave the country vulnerable to the failure of the system,
you leave the average person exposed to much greater damage even than we saw in this crisis.”
Martin Wolf: My own view is that the people, including Geithner, who dealt with this crisis made big mistakes
but also saved the world from another Great Depression
Full text
Tim Geithner
Martin Wolf
Lehman Brothers
Utvecklingen av finanskrisen, som briserade 2008, hade kunnat se helt annorlunda ut.
Det slår Timothy Geithner, chef på Federal Reserves New York-kontor fast i sin nya bok "Stress test".
SvD Näringsliv, 13 maj 2014
“The Great Recession: Causes and Consequences.”
We were suffering from inadequate demand.
Why, at the moment it was most needed and could have done the most good, did economics fail?
Paul Krugman, NYT 1 May 2014
Policy makers and politicians have ignored both the textbooks and the lessons of history. And the result has been a vast economic and human catastrophe, with trillions of dollars of productive potential squandered and millions of families placed in dire straits for no good reason.
Economists who took their own textbooks seriously quickly diagnosed the nature of our economic malaise: We were suffering from inadequate demand.
The financial crisis and the housing bust created an environment in which everyone was trying to spend less, but my spending is your income and your spending is my income, so when everyone tries to cut spending at the same time the result is an overall decline in incomes and a depressed economy.
And we know (or should know) that depressed economies behave quite differently from economies that are at or near full employment.
For example, many seemingly knowledgeable people — bankers, business leaders, public officials — warned that budget deficits would lead to soaring interest rates and inflation.
But economists knew that such warnings, which might have made sense under normal conditions, were way off base under the conditions we actually faced.
Sure enough, interest and inflation rates stayed low.
Full text
Economic theory discredited
Stabiliseringspolitik
Money Mania: Booms, Panics and Busts from Ancient Greece to the Great Meltdown by Bob Swarup. Bloomsbury Press
So what does Mr Swarup’s offering, Money Mania, add to the field? First it is unusually well-told, and expansive in scope.
Similarities between different episodes are breathtaking. Events in Ancient Rome and Athens, and Georgian Britain followed the same pattern as the crisis of 2008.
Review by John Authers, FT 27 April 2014
David Wessels bok om finanskrisen 'In Fed we Trust' Ben Bernanke's War on the Great Panic
I december firade Federal Reserve 100 år.
I december var det också fem år sedan styrräntan sänktes mot noll.
Louise Andrén Meiton, SvD 28 mars 2014
Wall Street banks and their foreign rivals have paid out $100bn in US legal settlements
since the financial crisis, according to Financial Times research
regulators and the Obama administration seek to counter perceptions that bankers have got off lightly for their role in the financial crisis.
Financial Times, 25 March 2014
Now that Ben Bernanke is no longer the head of the Fed, he can finally tell the truth about what caused the financial crash.
At least that's what a packed auditorium of over 1000 people as part of the financial conference staged by National Bank of Abu Dhabi, the UAE's largest bank, was hoping for earlier today when they paid an exorbitant amount of money to hear the former chairman talk.
Ben Bernanke about what caused the financial crash
So what was the reason, according to the man who was easily the most powerful person in the world for nearly a decade?
Ready?
"Overconfidence."
Tyler Durden, zerohedge, 4 March 2014
Bernanke's explanation, brought to us by Reuters, we wonder: did he perhaps get into the reason for the overconfidence? Maybe such as the Fed's endless hubris in believing it knew what it was doing, when time after time and especially over the past 30 years, the US central bank has shown that all it now does is lead the nation from bubble to bubble, from crisis to crisis, and replaces one asset bubble, first the dot com, then the housing, with another, even bigger one, until we get to the biggest bubble of all time - the stock market as you see it currently, where the S&P 500 soars to all time highs and when news of an ICBM launch can barely cause a dent in a ridiculous upward ramp driven by, you guessed it, overconfidence.
Full text at zerohedge
Ben Bernanke
Matthew O’Brien at The Atlantic has done the math. Fed.
In August 2008 there were 322 mentions of inflation, versus only 28 of unemployment and 19 of systemic risks or crises.
In the meeting on Sept. 16, 2008 — the day after Lehman fell! — there were 129 mentions of inflation
versus 26 mentions of unemployment and only four of systemic risks or crises.
Paul Krugman, 2 March 2014
In part it reflects the belief that the government should never seek to mitigate economic pain, because the private sector always knows best.
Back in the 1930s, Austrian economists like Friedrich Hayek and Joseph Schumpeter inveighed against any effort to fight the depression with easy money;
to do so, warned Schumpeter, would be to leave “the work of depressions undone.”
Modern conservatives are generally less open about the harshness of their view, but it’s pretty much the same.
Full text
How the Fed Let the World Blow Up in 2008
High oil prices blinded the Fed to the growing danger before the crash
MATTHEW O'BRIENFEB 26 2014
Can the European Central Bank legally act as lender of last resort to ensure the survival of the euro?
This question is of fundamental importance for the sustainability of the monetary union.
Recently, the German Constitutional Court ruled that it cannot.
In the court’s view the ECB has the power to conduct monetary policy,
but not to support member states in financial distress even if necessary to ensure the survival of the common currency.
Katharina Pistor, Vox, 26 February 2014
Janet Yellen announced February 19th that America’s central bank is moving to
cut off the massive financial lifeline that has been subsidizing the European banking system since the beginning of the global financial crisis in March of 2008.
By delaying foreign bank compliance with the stringent capital and borrowing requirements of section 165 of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) imposed on American banks,
the Fed was engaging in the moral hazard of allowing Europe to borrow at virtually zero interest from the Fed to fund its bloated social welfare states.
Chair Yellen’s actions mean the Fed is cutting off Europe and providing greater support for U.S. borrowing.
Breitbart, 24 February 2014
Full text
RE: Det förefaller som om det var Fed och inte ECB som ställde upp som Lender of Last Resort för de europeiska bankerna
som professor Pelotard har viskat i mitt öra.
The Federal Reserve final rule requiring higher capital levels from non-US banks,
including Deutsche Bank, Barclays and Credit Suisse,
with the aim of avoiding a US government bailout if their New York operations run into trouble.
FT February 19, 2014
European bank executives welcomed concessions by the Fed,
which came after a massive lobbying effort that enlisted the support of some US banks worried about retaliation from European regulators.
In particular, several bankers and lawyers said that they were relieved by a delay in the implementation
allowing more time for banks to increase their capital levels by retaining profits.
Full text
Thanks To QE
Bernanke Has Injected Foreign Banks With Over $1 Trillion In Cash For First Time Ever
Tyler Durden, zerohedge, 21 May 2013
Full text
How The Fed Is Handing Over Billions In "Profits" To Foreign Banks Each Year
All the cash generated by Fed excess reserves, has gone to foreign banks operating in the US, which according to the Fed, are vastly composed of European financial institutions.
Tyler Durden, zerohedge, 11 February 2013
Why has the Fed paid some $6 billion in interest to foreign banks, in the process subsidizing and keeping insolvent European and other foreign banks, in business and explicitly to the detriment of countless US-based banks who have to compete with Fed-funded foreign banks
Full text
The Fed's $600 Billion Stealth Bailout Of Foreign /European/ Banks Continues
At The Expense Of The Domestic Economy, Or Explaining Where All The QE2 Money Went
Tyler Durden, zerohedge, 6 December 2011
Courtesy of the recently declassified Fed discount window documents, we now know that the biggest beneficiaries of the Fed's generosity during the peak of the credit crisis were foreign banks, among which Belgium's Dexia was the most troubled, and thus most lent to, bank.
Many speculated that the US central bank would primarily focus its "rescue" efforts on US banks, not US-based (or local branches) of foreign (read European) banks: after all that's what the ECB is for.
If it becomes popular knowledge that the Chairman of the Fed, despite explicit instructions to enforce the trickle down of "printed" dollars to US banks, was only concerned about rescuing foreign banks with the $600 billion in excess cash created out of QE2, then all political hell is about to break loose
Full text
Basel
Banks
ECB
Yellen
Top of page
The Great Recession: Bailout
Paul Krugman, NYT, 23 February 23, 2014
Download from here
Pdf
Recession - The R-word - Transcripts
Policy makers at the Federal Reserve tell us not to worry,
that it’s mostly just bad weather and the normal ups and downs of the economic data.
But what if they’re wrong? Would they tell us if they thought we were heading for a new recession?
Rex Nutting, MarketWatch, Feb. 27, 2014
Laughing all the way to an economic crash
How the central bank coped with a crisis
DAVID WEIDNER'S WRITING ON THE WALL, MarketWatch, Feb. 25, 2014
“There are some critics who say we panicked in response to the market sell-off of that Monday.
I do not believe that’s the case, and I don’t believe it’s the case because I find it impossible to believe.”
Hilarious. What’s also impossible to believe was that curious bit of logic was spoken by Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, in 2008.
Fisher was speaking at one of several meetings of the Fed’s Open Market Committee in response to a financial crisis that was unfolding.
Transcripts of those meetings, more than 1,500 pages worth , were released at the end of last week
William C. Dudley, head of the open market desk, at one key meeting in June 2008. That month he gave a status report to the committee about Lehman Brothers, which would file for bankruptcy less than 90 days later.
“Lehman’s short-term financing counterparties have generally proved to be patient,” Dudley said. “The financing backstop provided by the Primary Dealer Credit Facility has been cited by many counterparties as a critical element that has encouraged them to keep their financing lines to Lehman in place.”
To be fair to Dudley, his assessment wasn’t too far off at the time. The worst of Lehman’s descent didn’t happen until September.
Full text
Transcripts of the U.S. central bank's meeting on Sept. 16 2008
Feb 21, 2014 Reuters/CNBC
Federal Reserve policymakers, in an emotional meeting on one of the darkest days of the 2008 financial crisis, were worried the failure of Lehman Brothers a day earlier would wreak havoc on a teetering financial system but feared cutting already low interest rates might prove an over-reaction.
Transcripts of the U.S. central bank's meeting on Sept. 16 of that year, released on Friday, showed then Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke flatly telling his colleagues he was philosophically torn about the collapse of the investment bank.
They also threw fresh light on a debate over whether to loosen monetary policy in the face of a crisis that was fast engulfing financial markets but which some policymakers thought would be resolved relatively quickly.
Full text
Full text of Transcripts at Fed
Lehman Brothers
On the morning after Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in 2008, most Federal Reserve officials still believed that the American economy would keep growing despite the metastasizing financial crisis.
The Fed’s policy-making committee voted unanimously against bolstering the economy by cutting interest rates, and several officials praised what they described as the decision to let Lehman fail,
saying it would help to restore a sense of accountability on Wall Street.
That optimism would not long endure. Just minutes after the end of that first meeting, a smaller group of Fed officials agreed to rescue the faltering insurance giant the American International Group, a company never before subject to Fed supervision that until then was barely on the government’s radar.
New York Times, 21 February 2014
As the world’s financial system stood on the verge of collapse in October 2008, Janet L. Yellen...
Mr. Bernanke, as chairman, played the role of mediator and consensus builder, Ms. Yellen often became the most outspoken defender of the policies, and a reference point for others.
New York Times, FEB. 21, 2014
Centralbanker skall INTE vara förutsägbara
Det är inte bra att aktörerna känner sig säkra. Det gör dem bara med oförsiktiga.
Rolf Englund blog 2014-02-13
Full text
Investors are hoping for a Goldilocks outcome for the US economy,
with growth forecast to be close to 3 per cent, but inflation just 1.6
This may happen. But the consensus is dangerously, well, consensual.
The gap between the highest and lowest growth forecasts is down to levels last seen at the height of the credit bubble in 2007, and before that at the end of the dotcom boom.
James Mackintosh, FT 11 Febr 2014
The danger is that investors, economists and the Fed turn out to be wrong.
When everyone agrees, any upset disturbs markets far more than when there is a wide range of views, as all will want to change their position at once.
Full text
Goldilocks
Top of page
This time is different
Don’t fret about soaring asset prices – this time is different
The probability of a rerun of what happened in the past decade is low
Wolfgang Munchau, Financial Times, December 29, 2013
All-time-high house prices in 10 of top 50 US metro areas
Home prices have zipped back into record territory in a handful of American cities,
a milestone that comes seven years after the housing bust ravaged the market and the broader economy.
MarketWatch, Dec. 30, 2013
Rolf Englund blog 5 december 2009:
- Jag tycker det är skriande uppenbart att räntan världen över är för låg och att en större del av stimulanserna borde ske via finanspolitiken. Men väljarna och därmed deras medlöpande politiker är rädda för budgetunderskott och vill hellre att villaägarna skall låna än att staten skall göra det.
Strategin synes vara att det gäller att stabilisera, helst höja, villapriserna så att konsumenterna främst i USA skall återgå till att konsumera med lånta pengar, dvs just det som ledde fram till katastrofen.
Detta kan inte vara klokt.
Klicka här
This is the most important book to have come out of the financial crisis.
The Bankers’ New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do About It,
by Anat Admati and Martin Hellwig, Princeton
Review by Martin Wolf, March 17, 2013
Eight ways conventional financial wisdom has changed post crisis
Nobody assumes subprime mortgage bonds are safe, for example, or blithely trusts triple-A credit ratings.
Nor do they presume that big banks cannot collapse, or that western central banks cannot keep rates at zero.
Gillian Tett, Financial Times December 26, 2013
Full text
Gillian Tett - Asset price bubbles and Central Bank Policy
Posterity will regard the economic performance we are now witnessing as a golden age.
It will also know, although we do not, how long this era lasts.
Martin Wolf, FT, 2/5 2007
When Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and AIG was taken over by the US government in the fall of 2008, the world almost came to an end.
Major banks in the US and the UK were literally hours away from shutting down, and ATMs were on the verge of running out of cash.
John Mauldin 29 October 2013
From 2008 to now: Charts of the financial crisis
MarketWatch, September 18, 2013
Watch the charts here
Varför min sida om Finanskrisen heter hedgefunds.htm
Finanskrisen och därmed eurokrisen tog sin början i Frankrike,
när tre hedgefonder tillhöriga Frankrikes största bank, BNP Paribas,
inställde betalningarna i augusti 2007.
Rolf Englund blog 26 augusti 2013
Stockholmsbörsen rasar för tredje dagen i rad, en nedgång som kostat aktieägarna nästan 300 miljarder kronor.
Årets uppgång är snart ett minne blott - och ett 40-tal aktier handlas på årslägsta.
DI 24 juni 2013
Full text
Hollande Bids Adieu to EU Vacation Culture as Crisis Lingers
six years after a phone call from Frankfurt shattered former European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet’s holiday in northern France.
The caller informed him that three troubled BNP Paribas SA hedge funds were causing money markets to seize up, the first signal that a global financial crisis was breaking out.
Bloomberg, Aug 26, 2013
You could read about it at the time on this website
Dow 2003-2013
"We are all Keynesians now"
Why do we pursue austerity when it seems not to work?
Rogoff and Reinhart?
John Mauldin 22 April 2013
Highly Recommended
What do I think about the real problems that are surfacing in the Rogoff and Reinhart assertion that debt above a ratio of 90% debt to GDP seems to slow economic growth by 1% (especially since I have quoted that data more than a few times)?
The first question comes from correspondence I have had with Ms. Aga Barberini, who works in the investment world in Milan, Italy. She came there from Poland some 20 years ago.
- I will vote Berlusconi again. I can't stand communists even if they call themselves "the left."
If by "working" we mean that austerity is supposed to produce growth, then of course it doesn't work. By definition, austerity means you are reducing a fiscal deficit, and doing so will reduce growth in the short term. That begs the question, why would you want to do that?
"Austerity" is now the name we give to the situation where a government has to limit its spending during an economic downturn or recession.
"We are all Keynesians now" is a famous phrase uttered by Milton Friedman and attributed to US President Richard Nixon.
(The phrase was first attributed to Milton Friedman in the December 31, 1965, edition of Time magazine. In the February 4, 1966, edition, Friedman wrote a letter clarifying that his original statement was, "In one sense, we are all Keynesians now; in another, nobody is any longer a Keynesian.") (Wikipedia)
The problem that arose was that most countries rarely followed through on the second part of Keynes's prescription, which was to pay back the debt when times were good.
My inbox almost exploded the last two days as friends and colleagues sent me links to multiple sources talking about the problems with Rogoff and Reinhart's work and asked for my thoughts. Given that I find This Time Is Different one of the more important books of the last decade, let me provide some context.
In 2010, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff released a paper,"Growth in a Time of Debt."
Their main result was that "… median growth rates for countries with public debt over 90 percent of GDP are roughly one percent lower than otherwise; average (mean) growth rates are several percent lower." The work suggested that countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent have a slightly negative average growth rate.
This has been one of the most cited stats in the public debate during the Great Recession.
If politicians want to keep the borrow-and-spend party going "just one more election cycle" and if no one takes away the punchbowl, the Bang! moment will most certainly arrive. That is the clear lesson of history.
It is almost irrelevant whether that number is 90% or 120% or 80%. It will be a different number for each country, depending on the confidence that investors have in the ability of a country to pay back its debt
As Reinhart and Rogoff wrote:
Highly indebted governments, banks, or corporations can seem to be merrily rolling along for an extended period, when bang! – confidence collapses, lenders disappear, and a crisis hits.
Bang! is the right word. It is the nature of human beings to assume that the current trend will work itself out, that things can't really be that bad. The trend is your friend … until it ends. Look at the bond markets only a year and then just a few months before World War I. There was no sign of an impending war. Everyone "knew" that cooler heads would prevail.
Italy is in a currency union called the Eurozone.
A currency union cannot allow its members to run up debts beyond what the market is willing to finance,
or the whole currency union will collapse.
Austerity is a consequence, not a punishment. A country loses access to cheap borrowed money as a consequence of running up too much debt and losing the confidence of lenders that the debt can be repaid.
Lenders don't sit around in clubs and discuss how to "punish" a country by requiring austerity; they simply decide not to lend.
If Italy were in control of its currency, might it make sense to print a little in the meantime, as the US, Great Britain, and Japan are doing?
There is certainly a school of thought that says yes. But in a currency union of multiple countries that are all at different places on the economic journey, it is almost impossible to have a one-size-fits-all monetary policy.
Full text
Martin Wolf och Rolf Englund om att den som har en sedelpress går inte i konkurs.
Click
Highly Recommended
The Last Time The Dow Was Here..
Zerohedge 5 March 2013
It is Highly Recommended to click here for Full text
It is five years to the day since the world woke up to something bad happening to the balance sheets of the world's largest banks.
That's five years since banks started to worry about lending to each other - and the global financial system started to seize up.
Stephanie Flanders, BBC Economics editor, 8 August 2012
Back then it was difficult for many outside the financial markets to see the potential risks for the global economy. It took the collapse of Lehman's investment bank and a world recession - a year later - to demonstrate that.
But, even pessimists would have hesitated to predict that Britain would still be struggling to put the crisis behind it, in the middle of 2012.
I have a more personal way of dating the crisis: my daughter, Claudia. She was born just weeks before the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Everyone said I had "missed the big story".
Now that baby is starting school next month, and the "big story" is still going strong. Alas.
Full text
Stephanie has been a reporter at the New York Times (2001); a speech writer and senior advisor to the US Treasury Secretary (1997-2001); a Financial Times leader-writer and columnist (1993-7); and an economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and London Business School.
She became BBC economics editor in April 2008. She has won numerous awards, including the 2010 Harold Wincott Award for online journalism.
Her father was Michael Flanders, of the 1950s and '60s musical comedy duo, Flanders and Swann.
She lives in West London with her partner and their two children.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the Telegraph's international business editor,
has followed the global financial crisis from the credit crunch to the eurozone debt crisis.
Here is a selection of news and views from his stories, blogs and columns over the past five years.
Daily Telegraph, 9 August 2012
Ekot om den globla skuldkrisen
Dow Charts - Crisis jargon buster, BBC
The risks of what Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, on Wednesday referred to as
the “unimaginable and unmentionable”, by which he meant a disorderly breakdown of the euro,
are high and getting worse.
Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph 10 Aug 2011
e24 11 augusti 02:54
Statsminister Fredrik Reinfeldt uttalar sig i kväll för första gången om den senaste finansiella oron.
– Det som skulle behöva göras är att sätta handling bakom orden om hårdare sparkrav
SvD 10 augusti 2011 kl 21:45 med bild av R omgiven av livvakter
Reinfeldt i Aktuellt 10 augusti 2011 om finanskrisen
Klicka här
De flesta av oss minns, eller bör minnas, hur den svenska regeringen, ledd av Carl Bildt, lade fram åtstramningspaket efter åtstramningspaket, likt Grekland, Irland, Italien, Spanien och Portugal i dag.
Det slutade med 500 procents ränta och Bildts berömda misslyckande som gav oss en flytande växelkurs.
Krisländerna inom eurozonen (EZ som den ibland kallas) har inte bara stora skulder och underskott i sina statsfinanser.
De har också en felaktig kostnadsnivå.
Läs mer här, på Rolf Englund blog 19 juli 2011
Det blir inte bättre av att det blir sämre
- Det är en i Sverige vanlig uppfattning att det var Göran Perssons nedskärningar som satte fart på den svenska ekonomin. Nedskärningarna räddade landet, tror många.
Men det som satte fart på den svenska ekonomin var att kronan sjönk och dollarn steg när Carl Bildt hade gjort sitt misslyckande.
Läs mer här, på Rolf Englund blog 5 juli 2011
“Central bankers have so far been the tower of strength,”
said Stefan Schneider, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank AG in Frankfurt.
“Lawmakers have done everything to destroy belief in their ability to solve the problems they’re facing.”
Bloomberg 11 August 2011
On Wednesday Mr Sarkozy summoned members of his government back from holiday for an emergency meeting
In a statement after the two hour meeting in the Elysee Palace in Paris, Mr Sarkozy said France’s pledge to reduce the budget deficit from last year’s 7.1 per cent to 3 per cent by 2013
“will be kept whatever the evolution of the economic situation”.
Financial Times 10 August 2011
Top of page
Nouriel Roubini och Arne "Ratos" Karlsson oense
Another recession may not be preventable. But policy can stop a second depression.
Nouriel Roubini
Ett så kraftigt kursfall förutsätter att man tror det ska bli en global djup recession,
och det tror inte jag
säger Arne Karlsson, vd på Ratos
Rolf Englund blog 10 augsti 2011
The general view is now that in this, the next round of the Great Recession,
there is a high risk of things getting worse, with no effective instruments at governments’ disposal.
The first point is correct but the second is not quite right.
Throughout the crisis – and before it – Keynesian economists provided a coherent interpretation of events
Joseph Stiglitz, August 9, 2011
Top of page
Skandias Realräntefond har stigit med 7,5 procent i år
Mest av alla Skandias fonder
Läs mer här
Past peak oil - life after cheap fossil fuels
Bulent Gokay, professor of international relations at Keele University UK, 4 August 2011
När Peak Oil höjer prisena och ny-Hooveristerna kör åtstramning
UK riots: 16,000 officers policing London's streets
Rolf Englund blog 9 augusti 2011
The Federal Reserve pledged for the first time to keep its benchmark interest rate at a record low at least through mid-2013
in a bid to revive the flagging recovery after a worldwide stock rout.
Bloomberg Aug 9, 2011
The underlying cause of this mess is the same as it was in the banking crash and Great Recession of 2007-9
- which is the recycling of the great surpluses of the exporting nations, China, Germany and Japan,
into the unsustainable debts of the great consuming nations, the US, UK, and much of the eurozone.
Robert Peston, BBC Business editor, 9 August 2011
Everyone agrees that bold action is required, but what kind of bold action?
Kenneth Rogoff, Financial Times August 8, 2011
Top of page
The Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index, the broadest index of U.S. stocks, lost 891.93 points, or just over 7%, Monday.
This represents a paper loss for the day of approximately $1.0 trillion.
CNN August 8, 2011
The crisis that started in the US real estate sector in 2007
has devastated state finances on both sides of the Atlantic and is threatening to wreck the euro and trigger a second global downturn.
Der Spiegel 8 August 2011
"Det gäller bara Grekland", Mycket fiffigt, Too clever by half,
men allt var fel från början
Rolf Englund blog 2011-07-22
1937! So demand will be depressed in both crisis and non-crisis economies;
this will lead to a vigorous recovery through … what?
Paul Krugman, July 21, 2011, 11:51 AM
The eurozone is a modern version of the gold standard
with the expectation that long and painful adjustment processes in deficit countries would unfold without a systemic crisis.
Miguel Carrion, Eurointelligence 19 July 2011
Top of page
UK is the most indebted advanced economy in the world
At every level – public, corporate, household and financial – the UK is attempting to pay off its debts.
As long as this continues, there's unlikely to be much growth in real terms.
Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph, 19 July 2011
Top of page
The World's Biggest Gold Reserves
CNBC July 2011
Raising taxes or cutting spending has side effects that cannot be ignored.
Either one or both will make it more difficult for the economy to grow. Let’s quickly look at a few basic economic equations.
The first is GDP = C + I + G + net exports, or
GDP is equal to Consumption (Consumer and Business) + Investment + Government Spending + Net Exports (Exports – Imports).
This is true for all times and countries.
John Mauldin 16 July 2011
Top of page
A question (to which I don’t have the full answer):
Why are the interest rates on Italian and Japanese debt so different?
As of right now, 10-year Japanese bonds are yielding 1.09 %; 10-year Italian bonds 5.76 %
Paul Krugman, July 16, 2011
Top of page
"50-60 procent nedsida för lägenhetspriserna"
säger Lars Wilderäng
e24 2011-07-12
Top of page
The Relationship Between Peak Oil and Peak Debt - Part 1
Gail Tverberg Tuesday, 12 July 201
The Economic Consequences of the Peak
Martin Wolf:
The US may be on the verge of making among the biggest and least-necessary financial mistakes in world history.
In the US, utopians of the right are seeking to smash the state that emerged from the 1930s and the second world war.
Via Rolf Englund blog
The key point here is the difference between raising the economy’s long-run growth rate, which is very hard,
and increasing demand when the economy is operating below potential, which isn’t hard at all.
Paul Krugman blog 12 July 2011
Top of page
50.2 billion USD, 330 miljarder SEK in May
The trade deficit in the U.S. widened in May to the highest level in almost three years, reflecting a surge in crude oil imports.
The gap grew 15 percent to $50.2 billion, exceeding all forecasts of 73 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News and the biggest since October 2008
Bloomberg 12 July 2011
Sverige, Irland och deras Tiger-ekonomier och bostadsbubblor
Rolf Englund blog 11 juli 2011
Tidskriften The Economist placerar Sverige bland de länder som har världens mest övervärderade bostadsmarknader.
Bara Hongkong, Australien och Frankrike anses ha mer uppblåsta huspriser.
DN 11 juli 2011
Confessions of a Financial Deregulator
Depression-era restrictions /Glass-Steagall/ on risk seemed less urgent,
given the US Federal Reserve’s proven ability to build firewalls between financial distress and aggregate demand.
New ways to borrow and to spread risk seemed to have little downside.
J. Bradford DeLong, project-syndicate.org, 2011
The Sorrow and the Pity of Another Liquidity Trap
I had read Hicks. I even knew Hicks. But I thought that his era, the Great Depression, had passed.
Brad DeLong, Bloomberg 5 July
Top of page
The truth is that creating jobs in a depressed economy is something government could and should be doing
Paul Krugman NYT 10 July 2011
Good, bad really, charts showing US Employment and Unemployment
John Mauldin 9 July 2011
While Democrats favor tax increases and mild adjustments to entitlements, Republicans pound the table for trillions of dollars of spending cuts and an axing of Obamacare.
Both, however, somewhat mystifyingly, believe that balancing the budget will magically produce 20 million jobs over the next 10 years.
Bill Gross, July 2011
Stall speed
Richard Yamarone notes that if year-over-year GDP growth dips below 2%, a recession always follows.
John Mauldin 2 July 2011
Debt ceiling
Although it is still very likely that Republican leaders in Congress will strike a last-minute deal with the White House,
the very fact that the two sides can contemplate a fight to the death over this issue is truly frightening,
not only for America but for the world as a whole.
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times July 6 2011
The Housing Horror Show Is Worse Than You Think
It starts with a steep decline lasting three or four years, followed by a brief rally that ends in years of stagnation.
The Dow took 35 years to return to pre-crash levels. The Nikkei trades at less than a third of where it peaked 22 years ago.
“The housing decline,” he says, “will be a long, multiyear process, and the multiplier effect across the economy will be enormous.”
Bloomberg 7 July 2011
Top of page
The employment population ratio fell to 58.2%, matching the lowest level during the current employment recession.
U-6, an alternate measure of labor underutilization that includes part time workers
and marginally attached workers, increased to 16.2%, the highest level this year.
CalculatedRisk 8 July 2011
Excellent graph
“Deleveraging” will dominate the rich world’s economies for years.
Done badly, it could wreck them
The process of deleveraging has barely begun
The Economist print July 7th 2011
Top of page
Europe Should Learn From Uruguay
In the 1990s he headed the advisory committees of international banks that negotiated debt-restructuring agreements for Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay
Bill Rhodes, CNBC 7 Jul 2011
Angel Gurria, secretary general of OECD
dicusses whether there is a way out of the cycle of high debt and low growth that the developed world finds itself in.
Hard Talk BBC, 6 July 2011
Highly Recommended
Gary Shilling is looking for a brand new cyclical recession beginning in 2012
The economy, he says, is like a four-cylinder engine, and a recovery usually requires all four to be firing.
They are consumer spending, employment, housing and the reversal of the inventory cycle.
Howard Gold, MarketWatch 24 June 2011
Top of page
Nice, sort of, chart of Youth Unemployment
Sverige mellan Frankrike och Rumänien
The Economist 5 juli 2011
Grekland, Persson och Jens Henriksson
Det blir inte bättre av att det blir sämre
Rolf Englund blog 5 juli 2011
This is truly a tragedy
Barack Herbert Hoover Obama
Paul Krugman, New York Times, July 2, 2011
Many commentators remain complacent about the debt ceiling;
the very gravity of the consequences if the ceiling isn’t raised, they say, ensures that in the end politicians will do what must be done.
But this complacency misses two important facts about the situation: the extremism of the modern G.O.P.,
and the urgent need for President Obama to draw a line in the sand against further extortion.
Paul Krugman, New York Times, 30 June 2011
Top of page
Specter of Years of Stagnating Wages Haunts the Globe
Median male real US earnings have not risen since 1975
Average real Japanese household incomes after taxation fell in the decade to mid-2000s
And those in Germany have been falling in the past 10 years.
Chris Giles, Financial Times, 28 Jun 2011, via CNBC
Friedman and Keynes
Many economists agree that the drastic measures taken probably prevented a repeat of the Great Depression. But...
Howard Gold, MarketWatch 1 July 2011
Det är en i Sverige vanlig uppfattning att det var Göran Perssons motsvarande nedskärningar som satte fart på den svenska ekonomin. Nedskärningarna räddade landet, tror många.
Det som satte fart på den svenska ekonomin var att kronan sjönk och dollarn steg när Carl Bildt hade gjort sitt misslyckande.
Rolf Englund blog 29 juni 2011
Why austerity alone risks a disaster
Martin Wolf, Financial Times June 28, 2011
Top of page
Every intervention so far has pretended that the crisis is one of liquidity, which can be solved by making loans to the troubled banks and governments in question.
Since there has been no open admission of default or debt restructuring by any of the troubled nations, the banking sector has not been forced to write down debt and raise more capital.
Gavyn Davies, FT blog June 19, 2011
Top of page
Denial of peak oil becomes more dangerous by the day.
The Obama administration prattles about clean energy, solar, wind and ethanol,
when petroleum powers 96% of the transportation sector and 44% of the industrial sector.
Nice Chart
TheBurningPlatform 15 June 2011
So I sent the government another request: in the light of what the IEA has revealed, what contingency plans has the UK now made?
The response amazed me: "With sufficient investment, the government does not believe that global oil production will peak between now and 2020 and consequently we do not have any contingency plans specific to a peak in oil production."
treehugger, 17 June 2011
Top of page
What is the “stall speed” of an economy?
Unemployment tends to rise when GDP growth falls below about 2.5-3 per cent
Gavyn Davies blog June 15, 2011
Whenever a big bank becomes insolvent, the Chancellor is faced with a stark choice.
Either you can bail the bank out with taxpayers’ money, his officials will tell him, or tomorrow there will be mayhem in the markets followed by economic collapse.
With the gun placed firmly against his head, the Chancellor will always opt for the apparent lesser of the two evils, and order a bail-out.
Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph 15 June 2011
According to the NBER, the “Great Recession” is now two years behind us,
but the recovery that normally follows a recession has not occurred.
While growth did rise for a while, it has been anaemic compared to the norm after a recession, and it is already trending down. Growth needs to exceed 3 per cent per annum to reduce unemployment—the rule of thumb known as Okun’s Law—and it needs to be substantially higher than this to make serious inroads into it. Instead, growth barely peeped its head above Okun’s level.
It is now below it again, and trending down.
Steve Keen June 11th, 2011
Top of page
The government was warned by its own civil servants two years ago that there could be
"significant negative economic consequences" to the UK posed by near-term "peak oil" energy shortages.
Terry Macalister, guardian, 15 June 2011
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) is refusing to hand over policy documents about "peak oil" – the point at which oil production reaches its maximum and then declines – under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act, despite releasing others in which it admits "secrecy around the topic is probably not good".
Terry Macalister and Lionel Badal, The Observer, 22 August 2010
Top of page
It's official:
The housing crisis that began in 2006 and has recently entered a double dip
is now worse than the Great Depression.
CNBC 14 Jun 2011
Top of page
Nouriel Roubini:
Världsekonomin hotas av en ”perfekt storm” bestående av usla amerikanska statsfinanser,
omstrukturering av skulder i EMU, stagnation i Japan och inbromsning i Kina
DI 2011-06-13
Roubini Says ‘Perfect Storm’ May Threaten Global Economy
Bloomberg 13 June, 2011
Top of page
BP Report
China Surpasses US As Largest Energy Consumer;
World Has 46.2 Year Of Proved Oil Reserves;
Crude Has Lots Of Upside In Real Terms
zerohedge, 8 june 2011
The extent of global oil demand is a subject that generates surprisingly little attention.
The reality is, though, that worldwide oil consumption is escalating far faster than is commonly understood.
New estimates by BP suggest that by 2030 the world will be consuming 40pc more energy than it does today.
Liam Halligan, Daily Telegraph 11 Jun 2011
Top of page
Who’s Been Buying Treasuries?
Tim Iacono 10 June 2011
Top of page
Robert Shiller, co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices
Claiming that he wasn't making any predictions, he predicted that home prices could fall another 25 percent.
"Statisticians deal with things that repeat themselves. This housing boom and bust is so historic and unprecedented, you can't forecast the future because you have no comparison."
Diana Olick, CNBC Real Estate Reporter, 10June 2011
Household wealth has only recovered about half the $16.4 trillion lost in the Great Recession.
One reason that the U.S. economy still struggles to achieve sustained growth is that Americans are a long way from recovering the
trillions of dollars of household wealth lost during the Great Recession.
CNN 9 June 2011
Top of page
How could any central banker with half a brain have looked at that graphic
in 2003, 2004, and 2005 and not thought that there was some pretty big trouble ahead?
Tim Iacono, 8 June 2011
Top of page
It is time to drop the emphasis on core inflation
Why the Fed will repeat its worst error
Is the Fed doomed to repeat its most infamous mistake,
the 1937 monetary tightening that extended the Great Depression?
Colin Barr, CNN, 6 June 2011
Top of page
Frankfurter Allgemeine;
Deutsche Banken bangen mit Griechenland
The irony of all this is that Germany would take the biggest hit if there was the private sector participation that Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schäuble are always asking for.
Eurointelligence 7 June 2011
Top of page
Är det rätt att stimulera ekonomin med ökade statliga utgifter i samband med en kris, som Keynes menade?
Eller kan stimulanspolitik snarare hämma den långsiktiga tillväxten, enligt Hayeks synsätt?
Om stimulansåtgärder finansieras med hjälp av tidigare överskott snarare än genom massiv belåning är riskerna med stimulanspolitik små.
Johnny Munkhammar och Nima Sanandaji, Svensk Tidskrift, 20 maj 2011
Grekland, Spanien och grunderna i macro
BNP är C + I + G +/- X Skall det vara så svårt att förstå för microhjärnorna?
Rolf Englund blog 2010-05-29
1991–1994 kom realräntechocken. Det rationella vore att släppa den fasta växelkursen.
Industrin kraschade, men regeringen behöll växelkursen, och lånade 600 miljarder för att hålla uppe statsutgifterna.
Nils-Eric Sandberg, Kristianstadsbladet 1 juni 2011
Has Vietnam turned a corner and become a good opportunity for investors?
CNBC 3 June 2011
USA: Huspriserna ner, arbetslösheten upp.
Det borde vara tvärtom för att krisen skall vara över
Rolf Englund blog 3 juni 2011
Home prices in Q1 of this year are now 2.9 percent below the previous quarterly bottom in Q1 of 2009,
effectively giving up all the gains of the past few years, which were of course fueled by the home buyer tax credit.
Diana Olick, CNBC Real Estate Reporter, 31 May 2011
the economy will need to add 200 thousand jobs per month to hold the unemployment rate steady.
The economy gained a mere 54,000 jobs in the month
The unemployment rate worsened to 9.1% from 9% in April
CNN June 3, 2011
The debate over post-crisis monetary and fiscal policy has been heating up, on both sides of the Atlantic.
So who is right? It will come as no surprise that economists disagree deeply.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 2 June 2011
---
A strange thing has happened to policy discussion: on both sides of the Atlantic,
a consensus has emerged among movers and shakers that nothing can or should be done about jobs.
Paul Krugman 29 May 2011
---
The disappointing economic data on US activity in recent months has brought a key policy debate back into focus.
The Keynesian side of this debate has been well served, with frequent outstanding contributions from Paul Krugman, Brad DeLong and others.
But I have had more trouble finding serious economic contributions from the classical school, even though they seem to be gaining ground in political and policy circles on both sides of the Atlantic.
For that reason, I was particularly interested in the recent lecture on the US recession given by the University of Chicago’s Robert Lucas.
Lucas is universally recognised as an intellectual giant, and his lecture gives a neat synopsis of what the classical school currently thinks, straight from the horse’s mouth.
Gavin Davies FT blog 31 may 2011
One Sunday in October 2008, Alistair Darling flew back from Washington to find Britain on the brink of banking meltdown. The chancellor was told by his Treasury officials that unless a rescue plan was announced by the time the City opened for business the following morning, there was no guarantee that cashpoints would work and that cheques would be honoured.
The possibility of global financial implosion concentrated minds wonderfully; bailout plans were announced that ensured disaster was averted. Co-ordinated and collective action meant there was no return to the 1930s, and within six months most countries were recovering.
Larry Elliott, Guardian, 31 May 2011
Not just that the global economy remains severely unbalanced or that it is business as usual in an unreformed financial sector.
It is not even that the euro area could trigger the sort of mayhem last seen in the autumn of 2008.
It is that oil prices have been rocketing and greenhouse gas emissions increased by a record amount last year.
There is the potential there for not just one crisis but three: a situation where the ATMs freeze up, the planet warms up, and the lights go out
Larry Elliott, Guardian, 31 May 2011
Top of page
Consider this:
It took all of human history into the 20th century to reach a population of 2 billion.
But in just the next 40 years, the world will add another 2 billion (for a total of 9 billion).
agriculture, as well as oil, metals, and other materials
CNN/Fortune 26 May 2011
IMF: Svenska huspriser för höga
Sveriges exit från den globala krisen har varit unikt lyckad vid jämförelse med andra länder inom EU.
”Bostadspriserna förefaller övervärderade och ett utdraget prisfall verkar sannolikt”
Dagens Industri 2011-06-01
"We estimate that house prices have peaked, and we believe that interest rates are set to continue to rise.
Therefore house prices will probably continue to fall," said Peter Doyle at the IMF said
The IMF warned in its annual assessment of the Swedish economy, that Swedish house prices are in line for a fall even if the eurozone debt crisis does not impact on growth.
thelocal.se, 1 June 2011
Top of page
Deja vu for the global economy
As explained in this earlier blog, economic fundamentals suggest that oil prices may have trouble maintaining their present levels,
and seem quite likely to drop by 10-20 per cent in coming quarters.
If that proves correct, then the global slowdown, like last year’s, will prove temporary.
If not, then it is a different ball game entirely.
Gavyn Davies May 29, 2011
Co-Founder Of Reaganomics, Paul Craig Roberts:
"There Is Probably More Democracy In China Than There Is In The West"
not in Greece, not in Ireland, not in the UK, not here, the outcomes are always to punish the innocent and reward the guilty.
Youtube via Zerohedge 23 May 2011
The reckless masters of "economic armageddon"?
There have been many books written about the financial crisis: What caused it, who’s to blame and how it could have – and should have – been prevented
This new one, “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon,” lives up to its lengthy title and gets deep into the weeds of who did what, when and how.
In short, Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner name names and connect the dots.
CNN 27 May 2011 with nice pic
Top of page
The only thing that could prevent another oil shock from happening before the end of 2012 would be another major economic contraction
One part I whiffed on was in my prediction that the world community would have embraced the idea of Peak Oil by now and begun adjusting accordingly
Perhaps things are being differently and more seriously considered behind closed doors, but out in public the dominant story line concerns reinvigorating consumer demand, not a looming liquid fuel crisis.
How the major economies can continue proceeding with a business-as-usual mindset given the oil data is really quite a mystery to me
Chris Martenson's Blog, May 27, 2011
Top of page
The Arab uprisings and the world financial crisis
What they have in common is the complete failure of almost all these experts to predict them.
The moral is to try to understand a bit more and compute a bit less.
Samuel Brittan, FT, May 26 2011
Top of page
De svenska bostadspriserna ligger enligt OECD 34 procent över
ett långsiktigt genomsnitt i förhållande till inkomsterna
DI 27 maj 2011
Bomarknaden har bromsat in
DN 27 maj 2011
Nygammal kunskap om orsak och verkan budgetunderskott och konjunktur
Rolf Englund blog 27 maj 2011
Top of page
Varför har skuldökningstakten överstigit inkomstökningarna i drygt ett decennium?
Lånefebern har svalnatoch är nu den lägsta sedan i december 1998.
Tillväxttakten för hushållens skuldberg växlade i april ned till 7,2 procent i årstakt.
Det kan jämföras med 7,3 procent i mars
Cecilia Hermansson, DI 26 maj 2011
Top of page
The Coming Economic Contraction
Economic contraction, the lowering of material wealth standards especially for the middle classes,
is more complex than the simple redistribution of tiny increments of wealth from the multitude to the aggressively rich.
James Keye / May 25th, 2011
Statskassan väntas bidra med 33 miljarder kronor 2011 till räntesubventioner för att de svenska hushållen ska kunna fortsätta jaga sitt drömboende.
Hushållens ränteavdrag väntas explodera mellan 2010 och 2011 till 124 miljarder kronor,
enligt Ekonomistyrningsverket ESV:s prognos
DI 25 maj 2011
Top of page
Bundesbank President och Grekland – “the central bank equivalent of nuclear deterrence:
defy us and we will blow up the world”
Rolf Englund blog 25 maj 2011
The western world is in serious economic and political trouble
Europe is ensnared in a debt crisis that threatens the future of its single currency, and the social stability of the European Union.
The US cannot control its budget deficit and must contend with infantile politics and a palpable sense of national decline.
Gideon Rachman, FT 23 May 2011
According to an index that Comeback America developed, the US is in worse shape from a fiscal standpoint than debt-plagued nations such as Italy or Spain
CNBC 23 May 2011
Svenska bankers riskabla dollarlån uppgår till 450 miljarder kronor
Vice riksbankschefen Lars Nyberg satte nyligen fingret på en annan öm punkt. Under finanskrisen fick de svenska bankerna problem med att betala sina amerikanska lån eftersom det saknades dollar.
Riksbanken fick undsätta bankerna med dollar från valutareserven, men också med dollar som den amerikanska centralbanken Fed ställde upp med.
Patricia Hedelius, e24, 23 maj 2011
Top of page
För att räkna ut den verkliga avkastning som tillexempel en köpare av statsobligationer får på sina utlånade pengar brukar man tala om realränta, det vill säga räntan justerad för inflation.
I USA är den ettåriga realräntan idag minus 3 procent, i Storbritannien minus 4 procent, i Tyskland minus 1 procent.
Även i Sverige är realräntan negativ
Andreas Cervenka, SvD Näringsliv 20 maj 2011
Top of page
"I wrote the software that turned mortgages into bonds"
Michael Osinski’s reflection on his Wall Street days when he created the software program
that turned mortgages into mortgage backed securities, enabling them to be traded around the world.
via Tim Iacono, May 18, 2011
Top of page
Don’t let another politician run the IMF
The fund is designed to push tough policies to straighten out countries that have mismanaged finances,
not win a popularity contest
Raghuram Rajan, professor at the University of Chicago Booth School and former IMF chief economist
Financial Times 19 May 2011
The housing market
The darkest hour
House prices dropped 3.3% in the year, the fastest decline since November 2009
That would mean big trouble for the economy.
The Economist print 19 May 2011
Top of page
Oil-producing countries have been warned /by IEA/to increase output
to safeguard global economic recovery or face the threat of the release of strategic stockpiles of oil
by western countries for the first time since 2005
Financial Times 19 May 2011
Watch out for tail risks hanging over the $14,300bn US Treasuries market
Risky to fund long-term holdings with short-term debt.
Gillian Tett, Financial Times, 19 May 2011
Something has gone badly wrong in the American labour market in recent years.
Once the envy of the developed world, US unemployment has risen much more sharply than in other economies since 2008,
and this has come after a prolonged period in which the number of jobs in the economy has been considerably less responsive to GDP growth than used to be the case.
So what has changed?
Gavyn Davies FT blog 6 May 2011
Sleepwalking through America’s Unemployment Crisis
The scope and composition of unemployment in America – a problem that is yet to be sufficiently recognized
for its increasingly detrimental impact on the country’s social fabric, its economic potential, and its already-fragile fiscal position and debt dynamics.
Mohamed A. El-Erian, ProjectSyndicate, 2011-05-01
The most interesting moment at a recent conference held in Bretton Woods economic came when Martin Wolf quizzed Larry Summers
"[Doesn’t] what has happened in the past few years, simply suggest that [academic] economists did not understand what was going on?”
Here is the most interesting part of Summers’ long answer: “There is a lot in [Walter] Bagehot that is about the crisis we just went through. There is more in [Hyman] Minsky, and perhaps more still in [Charles] Kindleberger.”
That may sound obscure to a non-economist, but it was a devastating indictment.
J. Bradford DeLong, 2011-04-29
Very Important Article
Finanspolitiska Rådet om Fastighetsskatten, maj 2011
Legitimitetsproblemet borde kunna lösas inom ramen för grundprinciperna att investeringar i och konsumtion av bostäder inte ska subventioneras i skattesystemet och att rörligheten på bostadsmarknaden inte ska hämmas
Klicka här
The activity of high frequency traders and the algorithms they used one year ago today when a ‘flash crash’ rattled the markets worldwide
should cause the Securities and Exchange Commission to “thoroughly” examine their role,
said agency chief Mary Schapiro, CNBC 6 May 2011
How long before a new financial crisis?
If the core ingredients of a financial crisis are boundless optimism, excessive leverage and overpriced assets,
then we are already in dangerous territory less than three years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers
John Plender, Financial Times, 17 May 2011
Top of page
Oil prices are likely to continue rising because the world's oil reserves are dwindling,
The world uses 86 million barrels of oil every day, he pointed out, adding: "we found some big oil fields in Brazil and let's say the bull estimates there are correct, that's still only two years worth."
famous investor and commodities bull Jim Rogers told CNBC 5 May 2011
Svenska bostäder är övervärderade med runt 20 procent, enligt Bostadskreditnämnden BKN
Hushållens rekordstora skulder på en övervärderad bostadsmarknad ökar Sveriges sårbarhet inför nästa kris, varnar statliga Bostadskreditnämndens analytiker.
Men SBAB:s chefsekonom anser att riskerna minskar
Dagens Industri 17 maj 2011
Lista: Så mycket kostar huset
Under den senaste tremånaders perioden kostade ett småhus i snitt 2.028 miljoner kronor i Sverige.
DN 17 maj 2011
Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund and now a professor at Harvard University,
Given the low growth, he says, inflation above central banks’ targets could be helpful:
“A bit of inflation is by far the lesser evil compared with even lower growth.
Five per cent inflation for 2 to 3 years is not the end of the world. There are even some benefits.”
Financial Times 13 may 2011
Top of page
The U.S. trade deficit widened in March, to $48.2 billion
Exports grew 4.6 percent to a record $172.7 billion.
Imports grew 4.9 percent to $220.8 billion
as the average price for imported oil hit $93.76 per barrel, the highest since September 2008.
CNBC 11 May 2011
Tar oljan snart slut?
Danne Nordling blog 14 juni, 2006, OBS 2006
Jag var igår 13/6 på Nationalekonomiska föreningen och lyssnade på professor Marian Radetzki, som talade över ämnet "hur högt kan oljepriset bli". Det bestod till större delen av en kritik mot de s k oljepessimisterna eller "peak-oil-företrädarna" som hävdar att oljekonsumtionen kulminerar när hälften av alla resurser förbrukats. Detta kommer att inträffa det här årtiondet pga resursbrist.
Debatten började den 12 maj 2005 då professor Kjell Aleklett, ordförande i ASPO, the Association for the Study of Peak Oil&Gas, skrev ett inlägg på Brännpunkt i SvD där Kinas stigande konsumtion anfördes som argument för att toppen för oljekonsumtionen snart är nådd.
Läs mer här
Peak Oil at - ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
I it is interesting to watch the issue creep into the mainstream media
Liks to videos at youtube
May 2011
Peak oil kommer att sänka vår levnadsstandard
Peak Oil innebär att oljeproduktionen når ett maximum och sedan dalar mot noll. Peak Oil sägs ha inträffat i Texas 1971 och i Norge för tio år sedan. Det viktiga ur ekonomisk synpunkt är vad som händer när det uppstår en brist, när efterfrågan överstiger tillgången. Det nya är att efterfrågan från länder som Indien och Kina blivit större vad vi tidigare hade en aaaning om.
Det skriver Rolf Englund, tidigare på Timbro, och en av grundarna av Medborgare mot EMU, Newsmill 2011-05-03
Just as we began to see at least the potential for peak oil and a rapid decline in the quality of some of our resources, we had the explosion of demand from China and India and the rest of the developing world.
Here, the key differences from the past were, as mentioned, the sheer scale of China and India and the unprecedented growth rates of developing countries in total. This acceleration of growth affected global demand quite suddenly.
Jeremy Grantham, the Chief Investment Officer of GMO Capital, with over $106 billion in assets under management, oilprice.com, 2nd May 2011
What's wrong with America's economy?
The biggest dangers lie in an area that politicians barely mention: the labour market.
The Economist print April 28th 2011
Peak Oil
The reason, as with so many global economic trends, can be summed up in a single word: China.
Since 2008, the last time oil passed $100 per barrel, demand in the developed world has fallen by 2.7m barrels per day,
or 6 per cent, and 4 per cent in the US, according to Trevor Houser of the Rhodium Group in New York.
At the same time, demand in developing countries has grown by 4.4m b/d, or 11 per cent, with China accounting for roughly half that growth.
FT April 25 2011
Peak Oil
Vi måste anpassa oss i betydligt snabbare takt än vi hittills gjort
Kjell Aleklett, Brännpunkt 23/4 2011
It's as if 2008 never happened.
Once again the world's investors are pumping up bubbles that will probably explode in their faces.
Bloomberg Businessweek's Economics editor Peter Coy, April 14, 2011
Top of page
In the depths of the financial crisis, many analysts pointed to the role of economics in causing the debacle.
Since then, though, whereas the bankers have been subject to continual harassment and threats of reform, the economists have managed to slip away into the night.
The searchlight needs to pick them out again. Having played a major role in causing the financial crisis, heaven knows what future disasters they will spring on us.
Roger Bootle, Daily Telegraph 24 Apr 2011
The combination of rising gasoline prices and the steepest increase in the cost of food in a generation
is threatening to push the US economy into a recession,
according to Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners
CNBC 21/4 2011
Top of page
In May 1931, a Viennese bank named Credit-Anstalt failed.
Founded by the famous Rothschild banking family in 1855, Credit-Anstalt was one of the most important financial institutions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
and its failure came as a shock because it was considered impregnable.
Bloomberg Businessweek's Economics editor Peter Coy, April 20, 2011
Top of page
The UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security (ITPOES)
is a group of British companies concerned that threats to energy security are not receiving the attention they merit.
The advanced countries are in no sense back to normality:
fiscal deficits remain exceptional; monetary policy is hugely accommodative; the financial sector is fragile, particularly in the eurozone; credit growth has been remarkably slow in the US and eurozone; households of several countries, including the US and UK, remain highly indebted; and there exists the possibility of sovereign defaults, bank failures or both within the eurozone.
Moreover, despite the scale of the monetary and fiscal stimuli applied, the recovery in these countries is still expected to be anaemic
Martin Wolf, FT April 19 2011
Top of page
I fjol så höjde 350.000 eller 12 procent av samtliga bolånetagare sina bolån med mer än 10.000 kronor samtidigt som de bodde kvar
237.000 personer höjde bolånen med mer än 100.000 kronor
DI 20/4 2011
Top of page
Credit rating agencies should never be taken too seriously, but for Standard & Poor's to put the United States on "negative outlook" is none the less something of event
Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph, 18 April 2011
Oljan har tagit miljoner år att bildas. Och på dryga 100 år har vi förbrukat hälften av jordens oljetillgångar...
På mindre än tjugo år skall vi konsumera vad som återstår...
Hur har det kunnat bli så?
Gunnar Lindstedt i boken "Olja - Jakten på det svarta guldet när världens oljekällor sinar", 2005
So says Goldman Sachs
"A key reason for concern is the sharp rise in gasoline prices so far in 2011
which is siphoning off household income at a run rate equivalent to $100 billion per year,"
writes economist Andrew Tilton CNN 18/4 2011
Svenska banker har skulder i utländsk valuta motsvarande på 1,5 gånger Sveriges BNP
Enligt Riksbankens senaste stabilitetsrapport är de svenska bankernas beroende av marknadsfinansiering bland de högsta i Europa.
Och en allt större del av pengarna till kredittörstiga svenska hushåll hämtas utomlands.
Andreas Cervenka, e24, 17 april 2011
After the Latin American debt crisis in the 1980s, US regulators lied about the health of American banks until they were in a position to take a voluntary haircut on their bad loans.
The Brady Plan holds important lessons for euro-zone governments looking for a way out of the current debt crisis.
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, Der Spiegel 14/4 2011
An extra $20 a barrel means America will pay an additional $69.3 billion /SEK 431 miljarder/ each year
Simon Hobbs, CNBC 14 Apr 2011
Top of page
A Senate panel issued a scathing report that describes
Goldman Sachs as a "case study" of the recklessness and greed on Wall Street
that set off the 2008 financial crisis.
CNN 14/4 2011
It is a question asked repeatedly across America:
why, in the aftermath of a financial mess that generated hundreds of billions in losses,
have no high-profile participants in the disaster been prosecuted?
New York Times, 14 Apr 2011
Top of page
World-Record
China Reserves Pass $3 Trillion
Policy Challenge for G-20
Bloomberg 14 april 2011
Svenska banker tillhör tillsammans med banker baserade i Australien, Hong Kong och Singapore de bättre kapitaliserade bankerna.
En lärdom från den senaste finansiella krisen är dock att även om banker är relativt välkapitaliserade
kan detta förhållandevis snabbt förändras.
Budgetprop. våren 2011, sidan 47
Tepco - Tokyo Electric Power - is Lehman Brothers times 10.
It really is too big to fail
David Pilling, FT, April 13 2011
Top of page
According to a study by PriceWaterhauseCoopers, the total volume of bad debt
in five EU countries – Germany, UK, Italy, Spain and Ireland rose 14% to € 688 bn in 2010.
The largest chunk came from the German banks, whose estimated bad debts rose 7% at € 225 bn /SEK 2 025 miljarder/
Eurointelligence 14/4 2011
RE: "Tsunamani sinks all the boats"
Eurozone banks need to address serious weaknesses in their funding, the report argued,
citing a $3,600bn “wall of maturing debt” coming due in the next two years across the globe,
with Irish and German banks facing the greatest difficulties in rolling over funding.
about IMF global financial stability report, FT 13/4 2011
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the IMF,
warned countries against cuttting their budgets
too far and creating long-term unemployment
Daily Telegraph 13/4 2011
The U.S. trade deficit, with and without petroleum
Click here
The /US/ petroleum /trade/ deficit decreased in February
as the quantity declined even as import prices continued to rise
Prices will be even higher in March and April
CalculatedRisk 12/4 2011
Top of page
The size of the subsidy taxpayers provide to big banks,
through their (our) implicit promise to banks that they won't be allowed to fail
Robert Peston BBC 12 April 2011
The nightmare of taking on ‘too big to fail’
The objective of regulation is not to prevent bank failures.
Governments cannot prevent them – though they can bail out failed banks
John Kay, FT April 12 2011
U.S. and Brent crude futures pushed higher Tuesday, despite a fresh warning from the International Energy Agency that high prices could erode demand
a flat reading of Saudi Arabian production raised questions about spare capacity
CNBC 12 Apr 2011
There are a couple of things to say about Britain’s banks
They still pose a serious threat to the nation’s long-term stability and prosperity.
They rely for their profits – and for the huge bonuses paid to senior staff – on the fact that taxpayers are underwriting the risks.
Thus public subsidy is turned into private profit
Philip Stephens, FT, April 11, 2011
Top of page
Gordon Brown told a US conference he had not realised the "entanglements" of global institutions
BBC 11/4 2011
The thinking behind the ring-fencing recommendation is that if the wholesale or investment banking arm of a universal bank were to go bad, the retail operation - which looks after our savings, lends to business and moves money around - would not be tainted.
Robert Peston, BBC, 11 April 2011
The Volcker rule
Why fences, walls and other myths cannot save us from bankers' risks
- a dilemma shared by much of the Western world
IBC's solution is built on a series of myths, myths that have been ruthlessly promoted by the UK banking lobby
Liam Halligan, Liam Halligan, Daily Telegraph, 9 Apr 2011
Top of page
I today, April 11th 2011, hereby declare to have invented the phrase
The Economic Consequences of the Peak
Rolf Englund Read more here
Peak Oil and the Second Great Depression (2010-2030):
A Survival Guide for Investors and Savers After Peak Oi
Kenneth D Worth 2011
Top of page
Sweden’s housing boom from 1997 to 2007 lasted 11 years and resulted in an above-trend increase of house prices by 67 percent,
Only France was close with an above-trend increase by more than 50 percent over nine years
Bloomberg 7/4 2011
Bor vi i en bubbla?
Är de stigande bostadspriserna i kombination med den ökande utlåningen exakt
de förutsättningar som behövs för att bostadsbubblan ska blåsas upp som luftskeppet Hindenburg?
Erik Helmerson, Signerat, DN 7/4 2011
Top of page
Waiting for the great rebalancing
I can say that nine trillion dollars is surely enough
Martin Wolf April 5 2011
Top of page
German banks are among the biggest holders of eurozone sovereign debt
– with €46.5bn of bonds from the governments of Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain combined,
according to the most recent data from the Bundesbank
The banks have another €91bn of exposure to those countries’ banking sectors
James Wilson and Gerrit Wiesmann, FT, April 5, 2011
Federal Reserve policy is keeping Treasury yields too
low to provide reasonable returns for most investors
Pimco's Bill Gross told CNBC 5 Apr 2011
Top of page
Sveriges bostadsägare lever farligt.
Den slutsatsen går att dra utifrån den forskningsrapport som Riksbanken presenterade i dag.
Hoten är många – räntorna stiger, utbudet av bostäder växer och olika regleringar ökar kostnaderna.
För att dämpa riskerna finns många metoder.
En av dem kan vara en ny konjunkturstyrd bolåneskatt
Annika Creutzer, e24 5/4 2011
Riksbankens utredning om riskerna på den svenska bostadsmarknaden
De höga svenska bostadspriserna kan i stor utsträckning förklaras av det man brukar kalla fundamentala faktorer, det vill säga att det finns naturliga ekonomiska förklaringar till den prisstegring som har skett
DI 5/4 2011
Top of page
In this New York Times story the other day, Floyd Norris noted the relationship between home prices and the Consumer Price Index’s measure of the same
- the nefarious “owners’ equivalant rent”
– a subject that is near and dear to the heart of yours truly
Tim Iacono April 4, 2011
The price of Brent crude edged above $120 a barrel
a two-and-a-half-year high
BBC 4 April 2011
Top of page
ECB and The Taylor Rule - a difference of 9 per cent
President Trichet’s European Central Bank again faces the conundrum that its monetary policy rarely suits all 17 members of the euro area
Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Greece would need an average rate of minus 4.6 percent, according to estimates by Credit Suisse equity strategists.
Germany requires a rate of 4.5 percent, they say.
Bloomberg Apr 4, 2011
Even Marc Faber isn’t perfect.
His best prediction of all time, he says, was also the worst investment call he’s ever made.
“That was the prediction that the tech bubble would burst,” which he made in 1998.
“But it came two years too early.”
CNBC 1 Apr 2011
Top of page
The trouble with this latest US recovery
it is built on monetary and fiscal policies which are wildly expansionary,
wholly unsustainable and will surely soon come to an end
Liam Halligan, Daily Telegraph 2 Apr 2011
Top of page
As an example, if the working age population grows 2.5 million per year and the participation rate rises to 65% (from 64.2%) over the next two years, the economy will need to add 200 thousand jobs per month to hold the unemployment rate steady.
Here is a repeat of the graph showing the US participation rate, unemployment rate, and employment-to-population ratio.
CalculatedRisk 3/4 2011 with, as usual, excellent charts
Top of page
Republicans
Mellon-style liquidationism is now the official doctrine of the G.O.P.
“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers, liquidate real estate.”
Paul Krugman, New York Times, March 31, 2011
Top of page
Bara en floskelavtrubbad EU-byråkrat kan kalla en blyväst för en livboj och förvänta sig att bli trodd.
Politikernas räddning av krisande euroländer ser i själva verket ut att vara en enkelbiljett till den undergång de påstår sig vilja undvika
Andreas Cervenka, SvD Näringsliv 1 april 2011
The chart shows US real median household income since 1967
Real median income will not have grown for almost 14 years
Can You Say Jobless Recovery?
John Mauldin 2/4 2011
Nice charts
Top of page
Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force,
the US unemployment rate would be over 11%
Mish 1/4 2011
Nice charts
Top of page
The Irish finance minister, Michael Noonan, said that 30 September, 2008, will go down in history as the blackest day in Ireland since the Civil War.
That was the fateful day on which the then Irish government extended its infamous guarantee to the banks, and thereby saddled the Irish taxpayer with liability for years of excessive, corrupt and injudicious lending.
Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph March 31st, 2011
I find it unforgivable that the last Irish government guaranteed bank debt so insouciantly and that the rest of the European Union has supported this decision.
For a sovereign to destroy its own credit, to save creditors of its banks, is plainly wrong.
It does not make it better, but worse, that it is doing so largely to protect financial systems in other countries.
Martin Wolf, FT March 8 2011
Liksom för Irland så är inte Spaniens största bekymmer att statsfinanserna spårade ur, som för Grekland och i viss mån Portugal,
utan att landets privata sektor och banker har bygg upp och finansierat en gigantisk fastighetsbubbla.
(Såväl de irländska som de spanska bankerna har i sin tur finansierat sig hos andra europeiska insititut.)
Per Lindvall e24, 1/4 2011
Keynes’s landmark 1936 General Theory
As he saw it, the propensity to save has exceeded the propensity to invest throughout most of recorded history.
The unpopularity of very low interest rates leads to what is known in financial circles as “the search for yield”.
Samuel Brittan, FT March 31 2011
Top of page
This is not a joke
At the height of the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve allowed the world’s largest banks to turn more than $118 billion in junk bonds, defaulted debt, securities of unknown ratings and stocks into cash.
Collateral of those asset types made up 72 percent of the total $164.3 billion in market-rate securities pledged to the Fed on Sept. 29, 2008, two weeks after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers
CNBC Apr 1, 2011
Those new GDP figures I mentioned yesterday showed real household disposable income falling by 0.8% in 2010.
That's the first time this measure has fallen since 1981.
As Graham Turner of GFC Economics has pointed out, it's also the largest annual decline since 1977
Stephanie Flanders, the BBC's economics editor, 30 March 2011
German president and SPD chief attack bankers
Like his predecessor Horst Köhler, who had called the financial markets “a monster”, German President Christian Wulff attacked the bankers by accusing them of being highly paid inhabitants of a parallel world.
Eurointelligence 1/4 2011
Top of page
Home prices are falling in most major U.S. cities, and the average prices in four of them are at their lowest point in 11 years.
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city index shows price declines in 19 cities from December to January. Eleven of them are at their lowest level since the housing bust.
Home values in Atlanta, Las Vegas, Detroit and Cleveland are now below January 2000 levels.
CNBC 29/3 2011
Säkerheten går före allt annat, säger den tyska förbundskanslern Angela Merkel. Men det är inte sant.
Tillväxten går före allt annat. Drömmen om att kunna leva i överflöd eller åtminstone välstånd är i dag spridd över hela världen, egentligen den enda globaliserade religionen i vår tid, en dröm som bokstavligen livnär sig på energi.
Och utan kärnkraft och fossila bränslen är den drömmen slutdrömd;
Richard Swartz, kolumn DN 2011-03-19
Top of page
“Black Swan” events — those well outside an ordinary distribution of outcomes — that cause massive losses
Peddlers of tail-risk products like to compare them to insurance
The Economist print 24/3 2011
Real vs Nominal Housing Prices: United States 1890-2010
Yves Smith nakedcapitalism
Top of page
Marcus Wallenberg vill inte se strängare eller tidigarelagda regler för svenska banker.
Anders Borgs utspel om att Sverige ska gå i bräschen för införandet av ett nytt regelverk för banker, har inte tagits emot med någon större glädje av de svenska storbankerna.
DI 24/3 2011
De svenska hushållen fortsätter att låna.
Under 2010 ökade lånen med 188 miljarder.
e24 24/3 2011
Top of page
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas President Richard W. Fisher said he sees “extraordinary speculative activity” in the U.S.
after the central bank pumped record amounts of stimulus into the economy.
Bloomberg 23/3 2011
Top of page
Meredith Whitney an Optimist? There Has to Be a Catch
CNBC 21 Mar 2011
Top of page
Three years after we entered the worst economic slump since the 1930s, a strange and disturbing thing has happened to our political discourse:
Washington has lost interest in the unemployed.
There are almost five times as many unemployed workers as there are job openings; the average unemployed worker has been jobless for 37 weeks, a post-World War II record.
Paul Krugman 17/3 2011
Bolån totalt i riket 2 022 miljarder
Stockholmarna har nu bostadsrättslån på drygt 324 miljarder kronor.
DI 2011-03-19
Top of page
The case for co-ordinated yen intervention
Gavyn Davies March 17, 2011 (nice charts)
Events of the past three months have shattered many assumptions about the Middle East.
The endurance of America’s special relationship with Saudi Arabia may now be next,
especially as the presence of Saudi troops on Bahraini soil presents the White House with a stark choice
between relations with Riyadh and support for democracy.
Ian Bremmer, FT March 17 2011
Who will buy Treasuries when the Fed doesn’t?
Treasury yields are perhaps 150 basis points or 1½% too low
when viewed on a historical context and
when compared with expected nominal GDP growth of 5%.
Bill Gross, March 2011
Top of page
For global financial markets, once-in-a-lifetime events are happening with such regularity that black swans may as well be white swans.
Such supposedly rare occurrences, brought into the national consciousness largely through Nassim Taleb’s 2007 book, “The Black Swan,” have dominated the markets for more than a decade.
CNBC 16/3 2011
US Building permits fell to an annual rate of 517,000 permits last month,
the lowest level seen since the government started tracking the figures in 1959
CNN March 16, 2011
US Housing Starts See Biggest Drop Since 1984
CNBC 16 March 2011
Top of page
The two great issues of the age, Niall Ferguson believes, are how a handful of Western countries came to dominate the world,
and whether their domination is now threatened by the rise of Asia.
The Economist print Mar 10th 2011
The January US trade deficit increased to $46.3 billion.
Exports rose 2.7 percent to an all-time high of $167.7 billion.
But imports rose a faster 5.2 percent to $214.1 billion.
That reflected a big jump in America's foreign oil bill.
CalculatedRisk March 10, 2011
A widening trade deficit is bad for the U.S. economy.
When imports outpace exports, more jobs go to foreign workers than to U.S. workers.
CNBC 10 Mar 2011
Recessions are supposed to teach thrift. So when the amount Americans owe on their houses, cars and credit cards,
which more than doubled in the years between the tech and housing busts,
fell $550 billion in 2009, commentators said U.S. consumers had reformed.
But nearly 2½ years after the financial crisis, we still owe $6 trillion more than we did a decade ago.
Worse, figures released by the Federal Reserve in late February revealed that 65% of the recent drop in consumer debt stems not from our paying overdue bills but from write-offs--banks' foreclosing on homes, canceling credit cards and otherwise...
Time, March 14 2011
Very Important Article
/Pimco's/ bearish call on Treasuries will not have been made lightly.
Given the record of Mr Gross, one cannot ignore the decision.
Since the total return fund began in 1987, it has generated an average annual return of 8.42 per cent
FT 11 March 2011
Pimco has dumped all of its US Treasury bond exposure in its flagship Total Return Fund.
The move makes sense given Pimco chief Bill Gross's public statements that Treasurys are over-valued.
CNBC 9/3 2011
Time to worry about oil?
Until recently, the received wisdom in the city was (a) that the steep rise in the oil price would be temporary,
and (b) that it would only cause serious problems if it went to $150 a barrel.
At least one of those two beliefs is now being tested. Possibly both.
Stephanie Flanders, the BBC's economics editor, 8 March 2011
Top of page
Charles Mackay, author of the 19th-century classic Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, captured the essential dynamic.
"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one."
Maybe modern-day oil traders could profit from reading Mackay's book, even though it was published in 1841.
In the 1970s and 1980s savings were in the 5 - 7% range.
In the decades since, personal savings have declined to the 1 - 3% range.
CNN June 30, 2010
Globalisation is the megatrend of our age.
Globalisation means change - within societies and economies as well as between societies and economies.
And success in the age of globalisation is to a large extent decided by the ability of nations and economies to change.
Carl Bildt, Utrikesminister, Tal vid Bilgi University, Istanbul 6 mars 2011
Once, only manufacturing workers needed to worry about competition from overseas,
but the combination of computers and telecommunications has made it possible to provide many services at long range.
Paul Krugman 6/3 2011
The Financial Services Authority (FSA) was in denial about the scale of the banking crisis right
up to the week of the historic multi-billion-pound bailout in October, 2008
Daily Telegraph 7/3 2011
Top of page
The ECB's governors might usefully study
Systematic Monetary Policy and the Effects of Oil Price Shocks, a seminal work in 1997 by a Professor Ben Bernanke of Princeton.
The reason why such shocks often lead to slumps is because policymakers make a hash of it.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 7 March 2011
Top of page
Why economic recovery has been so long in coming
Some economists expected a rapid bounce-back once we were past the acute phase of the financial crisis
— what I think of as the oh-God-we’re-all-gonna-die period —
which lasted roughly from September 2008 to March 2009.
Paul Krugman, New York Times March 3, 2011
Top of page
Saudi Arabia’s stock index has tumbled 11pc in wild trading over the past two days
The latest sell-off was triggered by the arrest of a Shi’ite cleric in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province
after he called for democratic reforms and a constitutional monarchy.
The province is home to Saudi Arabia’s aggrieved Shi’ite minority and also holds the country’s vast Ghawar oilfield,
placing it at the epicentre of global crude supply.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 2 March 2011
The 2011 oil shock
The Arab oil embargo of 1973, the Iranian revolution in 1978-79 and Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 are all painful reminders of how the region’s combustible mix of geopolitics and geology can wreak havoc.
There are good reasons to worry. The Middle East and north Africa produce more than one-third of the world’s oil.
The Economist print March 3rd 2011
"I don't know who's buying 30-year fixed debt.
I don't understand TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities)
that are projecting 30 years of benign inflation,"
Ray Dalio, founder & CIO of the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, 3 Mar 2011
Bridgewater Associates is the world's largest hedge fund, with $8.9 billion under management.
Why it makes sense to hope for a house price crash
Student debts are making it impossible for many young people to save - even before tuition fees rise to £9,000 a year - and could push the average age of first time buyers up to 44
Ian Cowie, Daily Telegraph,personal finance editor 3/3 2011
Top of page
Sverige har länge haft stora överskott i bytesbalansen och trenden fortsätter.
Under fjolårets fjärde kvartal var överskottet 53,3 miljarder kronor.
Det var en ökning från motsvarande kvartal 2009 då överskottet uppgick till 39,9 miljarder.
Viktor Munkhammar, DI 3/3 2011
George Orwell's utopian vision has found an echo in a little-known French philosopher
The West-knows-best, free-market-fundamentalism of the 1980s and triumphalist 1990s lasted until 2001-2008,
when it was exploded by 9/11, the sub-prime crash, global warming and the rise of China.
John Lichfield, The Independet, 1 March 2011
Top of page
Olof Palme förlorade tre val i rad och var med om att ruinera svensk ekonomi.
Göran Persson vann tre val i rad, räddade välfärdsstaten och genomförde ekonomiska reformer som vi fortfarande skördar frukterna av.
Den dagen socialdemokraterna inser att Persson var en mer framgångsrik ledare än Palme har de tagit ett viktigt steg mot regeringsmakten,
skriver PM Nilsson, chefredaktör på Newsmill 3/1 2011
The Congressional Budget Office recently announced that this year’s US budget deficit will be $1,500bn – a grim figure that is dominating the attention of policymakers.
Frequently overlooked, however, are our long-term structural deficits and debts; these are the biggest threat to our economic future.
Peter Peterson, FT, February 28 2011
Top of page
Att varna för en förestånde finanskrasch har vissa likheter med att slå larm om en kommande jordbävning i San Fransisco-trakten.
Till och med en jagsvag nybörjarprofet kan vara helt säker på att få rätt.
Men lika gärna som det kan smälla imorgon kan det dröja femtio år innan det blir dags att låta ett
”vad var det jag sa!” eka över de kaliforniska kullarna.
Andreas Cervenka, e24, 2011-02-27
Top of page
Greiders problem är att passionen övertrumfar det klara förnuftet och bitvis leder honom in i en längtan tillbaka till en förlorad värld – det svenska folkhemmet som det formades under 50- och 60-talen.
Han pläderar för att den reformism som socialdemokratin då stod för snarast var en medveten socialistisk politik.
Det tror jag inte på. Socialdemokratin har alltid varit en realistisk politisk rörelse som avskrev de socialistiska målen mycket tidigt.
Håkan Arvidsson om boken "Ingen kommer undan Olof Palme" av Göran Greider, SvD 27 februari 2011
Det var jag som betalade Ebbe Carlssons privatspaningar efter Olof Palmes mördare.
Tomas Fischer, Fokus nr 19 - 25/5 2007
Var Olof Palme en stor politiker?
I boken Olof Palme: Med verkligheten som fiende (Timbro, 2006) konstaterar jag att Palme – tillsammans med revolutionshjältar som Marx och Lenin – hedrades av Castro på Kuba med egen affisch:
Ӏr det ett pro eller ett kontra? Svaret blir helt beroende av den politiska vinkeln.
Och det är inte svar nog. Svaret måste handla om vart han strävade och vad han uträttade.”
Claes Arvidsson, SvD 27/2 2011
Top of page
In 2008, oil prices approached $150 per barrel.
Shortly afterwards, the global economy collapsed.
Stephen King, HSBC's group chief economist, 28 February 2011
Ever since the early 1970s, every single time oil prices have spiked sharply (rising by 80pc or more),
regular as clockwork the US has entered recession.
Given America's massive influence on worldwide economic sentiment,
the past five global recessions have all come in the wake of sharp jumps in the price of crude.
Liam Halligan, Daily Telegraph, 26 Feb 2011
Top of page
Vi ser att de tre länder (UK, ES, FR) som hade den mest expansiva prisutvecklingen vid mitten av 00-talet inte var de som utlöste prisnedgången.
Inte heller Sverige, som haft den långsiktigt mest expansiva prisuppgången, har ännu idag drabbats av någon verklig prisnedgång.
Istället var det USA, som långsiktigt hade den minsta prisuppgången näst Tyskland, som först drabbades av en prissänkning.
Danne Nordling 25/2 2011
Top of page
Peak oil:
Revelations that the Saudis have overstated their oil reserves are
a timely reminder of the huge threat to the global economy
Guardian 10 February 2011
The combined REO (Real Estate Owned) inventory
for Fannie, Freddie and the FHA
increased to a record 295,307 units at the end of Q4
CalculatedRisk on 2/24/2011
Top of page
International Energy Agency, IEA.
Chefen för IEA, Nobuo Tanaka, varnade för att om priserna ligger kvar på höga nivåer kan det knuffa världen tillbaka till finanskrisen 2008.
– Om priser på 100 dollar fortsätter under hela 2011, vi kallar det oljebördan skapar det samma slags kris som 2008, sade Tanaka till nyhetsbyrån Reuters.
I juli 2008 noterades rekordpriset 147 dollar per fat.
DN, Marianne Björklund 25/2 2011
Skulle förslaget bli verklighet blir det bli svårare för en ny politisk majoritet att återinföra fastighetsskatten.
Fastighetstaxeringen har upplevts som orättvis, inte minst för dem som bor i storstäder och i fritidshusområden.
Så motiverar regeringen nu att den väljer att tillsätta en utredning för att se om inte hela taxeringssystemet ska slopas
eller "avsevärt förenklas".
DI, Linda Öhrn 25/2 2011
Top of page
The 9 billion-people question
The world’s population will grow from almost 7 billion now to over 9 billion in 2050
A special report on feeding the world
The Economist print Feb 24th 2011
Petrol prices in America are substantially below levels elsewhere in the rich world,
and this is almost entirely due to the rock bottom level of petrol tax rates.
Very nice chart
The Economist Feb 23rd 2011
“Stagflation” remains a word not uttered in the polite company of the financial world.
But there remain only a few more tumblers to fall into place for a return to that awful word that conjures up images of the “malaise days” of the late 1970's and early ‘80s, where rising inflation and slumping employment tamped down economic growth.
CNBC, 23 Feb 2011
Top of page
Olof Palme var ingen stor politiker
Palme hade chansen att införa demokratisk socialism med hjälp av LO:s förslag om löntagarfonder
Göran Greiders nya Palmebiografi
Danne Nordling 22/2 2011
Bostadsmarknaden i Tyskland är ett föredöme, enligt BKN:s analytiker Bengt Hansson
som länge har varit den tydligaste rösten för att det finns en svensk bostadsbubbla.
Sjunkande bostadspriser under de senaste tjugo åren, lån som vanligtvis har en bindningstid på mellan 5 och 10 år,
regelmässiga amorteringar, inga ränteavdrag och en stor och fungerande hyresmarknad.
Linda Öhrn, DI 23/2 2011
Hushållens skuldsättning i spåren av finanskrisen
- en internationell jämförelse
Bostadskreditnämnden Februari 2011
Hushållen underskattar risken med att låna högt med bostaden som säkerhet.
När bopriserna faller kommer många hushåll att få det svårt.
"Vi har en bubbla sedan två år tillbaka och den kommer att fördjupas i takt med att räntorna stiger.
När vi kommer upp i normala räntenivåer på 5,5 procent, kommer det att märkas",
Bengt Hansson, analytiker på Bostadskreditnämnden (BKN), DI/TT 23/2 2011
Robert Shiller, a Yale economist and half of the Case-Shiller team:
"There's a substantial risk of home prices falling another 15%, 20% or 25% more,"
CNN February 22, 2011
Top of page
For those of us who lived through the ERM crisis of 1992 and followed German events closely at that time, all this has a familiar ring.
It was not just recession in the UK, Italy, Spain, and parts of Scandinavia that caused the fixed exchange system to blow up, it was the deadly cocktail of slumps and banking troubles in these countries combining with German overheating. The mix triggered the final crisis.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, February 21st, 2011
Top of page
Fear of 'Catastrophic' Crash Rising Despite Bull Market
the Flash Crash Advisory Commission that met on Friday has a long way to go
CNBC 18 Feb 2011
Regulators want big, complex banks to hold larger buffers of capital to protect the financial system.
Big banks argue this is unnecessary because risk is diversified across their larger balance sheets.
Who is right? Natural sciences – especially epidemiology, ecology and genetics – provide clues.
The writers are executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England,
and a professor of zoology at Oxford University and former British chief scientific adviser
FT February 20 2011
Top of page
Tack vare regeringens framgångsrika hantering av finanskrisen har Sverige inte drabbats av de underskott som nu plågar så många europeiska länder.
Detta budskap har upprepats så många gånger det senaste året att det förvandlats till ett slags sanning, höjd över varje form av ifrågasättande.
Men hur väl stämmer finansministerns version överens med vad som faktiskt inträffat?
Peter Wolodarski, DN 20/2 2011
Highly recommended
Gene Sharp is no Che Guevara but he may have had more influence than any other political theorist of his generation.
His central message is that the power of dictatorships comes from the willing obedience of the people they govern
- and that if the people can develop techniques of withholding their consent, a regime will crumble.
BBC 21 February 2011
Will Saudi Arabia be Next?
The country supplies about 12% of global oil production and sits on at least a fifth of the world’s oil reserves.
Bahrain is near key parts of the country’s crude reserves.
CNBC, 20 Feb 2011
Close ties between the United States and Bahrain
CNN video 2010
Top of page
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. plans to file a civil suit against at least three former Washington Mutual executives,
including former chief executive Kerry Killinger, seeking to collect more than $1 billion in damages
CalculatedRisk 19/2 2011
Based on one measure of volatility, stocks haven't risen this much amid price swings this narrow since 1971
Don't get complacent.
CNBC 17/2 2011
The S&P 500 hit 1334 in morning trading Wednesday.
You may not have inscribed that number on your forehead, but it is noteworthy all the same because
it means the big-cap stock index has doubled its financial meltdown low of 666.79 on March 6, 2009.
CNN February 16, 2011
*
Ekonomiläroböckerna och finanskrisen
I min egen lärobok, som har kommit i elva upplagor, finns visserligen en del avsnitt
om bubblor och om irrationaliteten och kasten på t.ex valutamarknaderna.
Men de avsnitten måste byggas ut till nästa upplaga. Likaså måste Keynes få en grundligare behandling - inte minst begreppet “likviditetsfälla” och
hur den påverkar penningpolitiken.
Klas Eklund blog 2/3 2009
Top of page
Bloody crack-down in Bahrain
The situation is fraught with risk since a Sunni monarchy rules a Shia majority
with mixed Iranian ancestry and sympathetic ties to Tehran.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 18 Feb 2011
If you thought the revolution in Egypt posed some tricky dilemmas for
American foreign policy, how about the upheavals in Bahrain?
Bahrain is a
tiny place. But is also the base for the US Fifth Fleet – the basis of
American power in the Persian Gulf.
Gideon Rachman blog February 17, 2011
What caused the Flash Crash?
You won't find it in this report. It's really a series of recommendations
Here's a few highlights.
Bob Pisani, CNBC 18 Feb 2011
Top of page
It's a fair bet that there will never be another film
on general release that features both Matt Damon and the FT's Chief Economic Commentator, Martin Wolf.
Inside Job, the documentary about the financial crisis, also has an Oscar nomination for best documentary film,
and some really pretty pictures of Iceland.
Stephanie Flanders, the BBC's economics editor, 17 February 2011
Top of page
How Goldman Killed A.I.G.
WILLIAM D. COHAN, NYT February 16, 2011
Did Goldman Sachs Kill AIG ?
The Big Picture February 17th, 2011
Top of page
Germany may have Europe’s largest and most robust economy, but...
An auction for WestLB, a publicly owned institution in Düsseldorf that was once Germany’s third-largest lender, has attracted just two bidders
The New York Times 17 Feb 2011
Top of page
Sun unleashes huge solar flare towards Earth
By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News 16 February 2011
For 2011, we should expect multi-family completions to be
at or near a record low, and an increase in multi-family starts.
CalculatedRisk 16/2 2011
Top of page
The free fall of the dollar in the late 1970s forced the US to tighten monetary policy and address its budget deficits, commencing the correction of double-digit inflation.
In the mid-1980s, large current account deficits and a sharp dollar decline helped produce initial cuts in budget deficits.
Most importantly, the recent crash came after record imbalances had seen huge capital inflows into the US, keeping monetary conditions loose and interest rates low.
Fred Bergsten, FT February 15 2011
Top of page
President Obama's plan to limit two popular deductions for wealthy taxpayers will hit a wall of resistance from entrenched special interests.
The president once again proposed in his budget to curtail high-income earners' tax deduction for mortgage interest payments and charitable contributions.
CNNMoney February 15, 2011
Top of page
The British prime minister’s repudiation of multiculturalism was so uncontroversial as to be almost platitudinous.
In a recent speech, David Cameron emphasized the distinction between Islamic devotion and jihadi extremism,
and argued that the government ought not to fund organizations that reject democracy, women’s rights, and equality before the law.
Daniel Hannan, Newsweek February 13, 2011
Governments in Jakarta, Manila and New Delhi are grappling with their own subprime crisis of sorts.
This one reflects a toxic mix of suboptimal food stocks, exploding demand, wacky weather and zero interest rates around the globe.
Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who predicted the U.S. financial crisis, says surging food and energy costs are stoking emerging-market inflation that’s
serious enough to topple governments. Hosni Mubarak over in Egypt can attest to that.
William Pesek Bloomberg Feb 13, 2011
Top of page
Vilket börsfall klarar en genomsnittlig pensionssparare utan att gripas av panik?
Valfrihet har varit honnörsordet, men extrem aktieexponering har blivit effekten.
Peter Malmqvist, DN Debatt 14/2 2011
Top of page
Aleklett
Är vi på väg mot en ny oljeprischock eller är den senaste tidens starka återhämtning bara tillfällig?
I grafiken kan du följa oljepriset per fat (Brent) sedan år 2000.
DN 2011-02-05
Top of page
Västvärldens extremlåga räntor är ett förföriskt gift som svider lika mycket för många sparare som en börskrasch.
Även i det numera världsberömda tillväxtundret Kingdom of Sweden ligger Riksbankens reporänta fortfarande på blygsamma 1,25 procent.
Realräntan är negativ. I Europa och USA råder samma permanenta undantagstillstånd.
Andreas Cervenka, e24 13/2 2011
After eighteen years as the world’s most powerful central banker, Alan Greenspan has changed the way people think about money, credit,
and most importantly, he has changed the way people view debt.
Debt, a pariah to generations following the Great Depression, has been embraced by recent generations.
Tim Iacono, February 11, 2011
Why a Housing Double Dip Could Kill the Recovery
TIME, Feb. 08, 2011
US Trade Deficit /$40.6 bn/ increased in December
The first graph shows the monthly U.S. exports and imports in dollar
The second graph shows the U.S. trade deficit, with and without petroleum
CalculatedRisk, February 11, 2011
Higly Recommended
Top of page
When the Queen asked asked an academic at the LSE why the economics profession had failed to predict the credit crunch, she raised a topic which continues to resonate.
Although many answers have been given to Her Majesty’s question, I suspect that none of them has really settled the issue. Her question is disarmingly simple, but the answer is not.
Gavyn Davies blog, February 10, 2011
The International Monetary Fund badly missed the risks that led to the global financial crisis
because of a naive admiration of light-touch US and UK financial regulation and a “groupthink” mentality
FT February 9 2011
The International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s management and staff welcomed a report released on Wednesday by the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the IMF on the Fund's performance in the period prior to the global economic and financial crisis.
People´s Daily Online English (Folkets Dagblad, Peking), 10/2 2011
"Even as late as April 2007, the IMF's banner message was one of continued optimism
within a prevailing benign global environment,"
Behind the scenes, a number of board members took issue with the upbeat messages
Daily Telegraph 10 Feb 2011
Top of page
The deleveraging process in the US and, to a lesser extent the UK, appears to have stalled
before it has even started to gather impetus.
Household sector debt in the UK and Spain amounted to 101 per cent and 85 per cent of GDP respectively in 2008.
John Plender, FT, February 8 2011
Top of page
Between 2010 and 2015, the UK is forecast to have the third largest reduction in the share of government borrowing in national income among 29 high-income countries:
only Iceland and Ireland are to cut more.
The reduction in cyclically adjusted borrowing, is even forecast to be the second largest, after Greece.
Yet the UK has had no fiscal crisis. That makes its austerity remarkable.
Martin Wolf, FT 8/2 2011
The core issue in Egypt can be boiled down to this:
Are we witnessing Tehran 1979 or Berlin 1989?
Roger Cohen, IHT February 7, 2011
Top of page
The abysmal results came as no surprise to those who knew that
the Keynesian doctrine of spending your way to prosperity had been discredited decades ago.
Research conducted by Harvard economist Robert Barro, for instance, found that the extra economic impact of government spending – also known as the Keynesian multiplier effect, which must be greater than one for any fiscal stimulus to be effective – was “insignificantly different from zero”.
The Romer-Bernstein report, however, dubiously assumed a multiplier of 1.57.
Darrell Issa, FT, February 7 2011
Top of page
According to yesterday’s UN figures, world food prices rose to another record high in January,
Fed by explosive growth in demand in the developing world, the costs of fuel, metal and other commodities are following a similar trajectory.
Daily Telegraph 3 Feb 2011
Den danska banken Amagerbanken har begärt sig själva i konkurs.
Banken blir ett fall för det statliga bolag, som bildats för att avveckla krisande banker.
Ekot 7/2 2011
It is hard to estimate the exact amount it will cost to recapitalise the European banking sector. I have heard a credible estimate of €100bn-€200bn.
Last year’s bank stress tests came up with a puny €3.5bn – a deliberate attempt by Europe’s regulatory authorities to misrepresent facts and mislead the public.
Everything I hear about the next round of stress tests tells me they will once again try to hide the truth.
Wolfgang Münchau. FT February 6 2011
Best Reagan Clips from 1980 Carter debate
Youtube
Top of page
Payroll employment is still 7.7 million below the pre-recession peak,
and if the the U.S. adds 2.5 million payroll jobs per year it would take 3+ years to return to the pre-recession peak.
And that doesn't include population growth
CalculatedRisk with nice charts, as usual, 6/2 2011
Top of page
With memories of last May's "Flash Crash" still fresh in investors' minds,
now comes warning of a market meltdown that could extend beyond stocks
— a possible "Splash Crash" that also would affect currencies, commodities and bonds.
The interconnectedness of high-speed trading platforms is making such an event increasingly possible, says John Bates
CNBC 3 Feb 2011
Top of page
Today’s rock-bottom yields, however, have less to do with disinflation and more to do with providing fuel for an asset-based economy that promotes unsustainable wealth creation and a false confidence in perpetual capital gains.
Bill Gross, Pimco, February 2011
As a profession we have failed miserably at our primary function – the efficient and productive allocation of capital: The S&L debacle of the early 1980s, the Asian crisis, LTCM, dotcoms, subprimes, Lehman and the resurrection, instead of the reformation, of Wall Street, are major sins of the modern era of money.
Bill Gross, Pimco, February 2011
SEB:s vd Annika Falkengren
Vinst 4,3 miljarder bara under det sista kvartalet.
Bonusfest på 1,7 miljarder - en bonusökning med 107 procent.
Och nu väntar höjd utdelning för familjen Wallenberg och de andra aktieägarna.
Expressen 4 feb 2011
The key issue in Europe now is not the merits of the single currency but the parlous state of its banking system.
Philippe Legrain, Eurointelligence 11.01.2011
Klas Eklund, SEB:s seniorekonom, har skrivit en rapport från årets World Economic Forum i Davos.
Analytiker och ekonomer oroar sig över skulduppbyggnad och globala obalanser.
Anpassningen för skuldsatta länder blir smärtsam och utdragen.
I detta läge framstår det robusta Norden som en förebild.
SEB 2011
Larry Summers about Banks och Shadow Banks:
“There is a Maginot Line risk,” “That which is being defended is indeed impregnable – but not difficult to circumvent.”
FT February 2 2011
Top of page
Under 2011 når världens befolkning sju miljarder, och befolkningskurvan stiger brant.
Kan vårt klot livnära oss alla? Och vart är befolkningstillväxten på väg?
Se videon hos National Geographic – om du vågar!
Top of page
“Amazing” that the Irish government has “socialized” the banks
— some $80 billion in senior and subordinated debt — and made it the financial responsibility of Irish taxpayers, who didn’t create it.
Michael Lewis, author of "Liar’s Poker," "The Big Short" and "The Blind Side,"
CNBC 1 Feb 2011
Top of page
The crisis has not proved a great turning point, so far.
The ratio of private gross debt to US gross domestic product rose from 123 per cent in 1981 to 293 per cent in 2009.
By the third quarter of last year, the ratio had fallen to 263 per cent.
Martin Wolf, February 1 2011
Top of page
/House/ Ownership Society Is Over
Diana Olick, CNBC Real Estate Reporter, 1 Feb 2011
Mätt med det handelsvägda TCW-indexet noterar kronan den starkaste nivån sedan sommaren 1998.
e24 26/1 2011
Top of page
Are zero interest rates a subsidy to banks?
Back and forth between Leijonhufvud and Krugman
Axel Leijonhufvud: The two pioneers of modern monetary economics – Irving Fisher and Knut Wicksell ...
Eurointelligence 26/1 2011
Top of page
Some 5.6m US home loans are at least three months in arrears on payments
FT January 23 2011
Top of page
As on most things, economists disagree – sometimes violently – on the question of
whether apparently ballooning global demand for energy can be met in an economically sustainable way.
One trusts to the genius of markets to find efficiencies and alternative
The other takes the view that rising demand will drive prices so high that it kills growth and/or excludes poorer countries from participating in it, with potentially catastrophic economic, social and geo-political consequences.
BP has placed itself firmly with the former of these two camps with its latest "Energy Outlook"
Jeremy Warner Daily Telegraph 20 Jan 2011
Top of page
The IMF’s Article IV report on Ireland published in September 2007 begins:
“Economic performance remains very strong, supported by SOUND policies. Given the Irish economy’s strong fundamentals and the authorities’ commitment to sound policies, Directors expected economic growth to remain robust over the medium term.”
The IMF said Ireland was in fiscal SURPLUS of 3pc of GDP and total public debt had fallen to just 12pc.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard January 21st, 2011
Top of page
Get Ready For Another Housing Crash
John Carney, Senior Editor, CNBC 18 Jan 2011
Top of page
25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis
Time Magazine, January 2011
Om bankerna kräver en amortering på nya lån så att de inom tio år är högst 70-75 procent av en bostads värde så innebär det att
ett hushåll som köper en bostad för två miljoner kronor och lånar 85 procent åläggs ett sparande till sig själv på uppemot 30.000 kronor om året i tio år.
Historiskt sett har dock bostäder stigit i värde, vilket gör att amorteringskravet i praktiken skulle upphöra tidigare.
Stefan Attefall (KD), civil- och bostadsminister, DN Debatt 19/1 2011
Mellan 2000 och 2010 ökade priset på en svensk villa med 72 procent.
Samtidigt ökade bostadsrätterna i pris med 153 procent i genomsnitt
e24 18/1 2011, reporter Christina Lindqvist Sjöström
Top of page
På frågan om hur han ser på exempelvis sänkta ränteavdrag och ändrad fastighetsbeskattning sade Anders Borg att
det gäller att titta brett på olika åtgärder.
"Vi ska inte stänga dörren, vi behöver en bred diskussion", sade han.
Dagens Industri 17/1 2011
Många unga, högutbildade medelinkomsttagare i Stockholm är lånemiljonärer.
Fortsätter prisrallyt uppåt kan de fortsätta att använda sina villor och innerstadsbostadsrätter som bankomater för att plocka ut ännu mer pengar och åka till Bahamas på semester eller köpa en teppanyakihäll.
Sofia Nerbrand, Kolumn SvD 17/1 2011
Current Account Imbalances Coming Back
Joseph E. Gagnon, Peterson Institute for International Economics
January 2011
Top of page
Hur många euro går det på en tulpanlök? Rätt svar är: minst en.
Den gemensamma valutan har alla förutsättningar att tillsammans med 1600-talets holländska tulpaner
kvala in på fortsättningen av den framlidna professorn Charles P Kindlebergers klassiska lista över historiska finans- och spekulationskriser.
Per Lindvall e24 14/1 2011
Top of page
Citigroup, the nation's third-largest bank by assets, was on the verge of being closed by regulators the week of Nov. 24, 2008
as depositors rapidly withdrew money and the bank's counterparties declined to provide it credit, according to a government report
Huffington Post 13/1 2011
Top of page
Roubini:
Europe needs growth to prevent a disorderly collapse of the euro area.
Der Spiegel 11/1 2011
Portugal
Åtstramningarna som har framtvingats av marknaderna gör saken inte bättre, i alla fall inte på kort sikt. Medan länder som Tyskland och Sverige växer så det knakar väntas Portugals BNP sjunka i år,
precis som investeringarna, sysselsättningen och den offentliga och privata konsumtionen.
Hur Portugal i det läget ska klara av att sänka budgetunderskottet är för många en gåta.
Tomas Lundin, SvD Näringsliv 12/1 2011
Top of page
In a new book “The Age of Deleveraging: Investment Strategies for a Decade of Slow Growth and Deflation”*, Gary Shilling, an economist, argues for the deflationary outcome.
He expects American GDP growth to average only 2% over the next decade as the economy struggles to deal with the debt burden.
Buttonwood, The Economist print Jan 6, 2011
Top of page
Det är inte konstigt att vi lånar i stället för att spara, och att det blir risk för bubblor,
när man får göra avdrag för låneräntor medan sparräntor beskattas stenhårt.
Carl B Hamilton (FP) pekar i rätt riktning när han vill ha sänkt skatt på sparande och minskad avdragsrätt, men...
SvD ledarsidan 11/1 2011
Top of page
Deleveraging, Deceleration and the Double Dip
For a long time I’ve focused on the contribution that the change in debt makes to aggregate demand,
in the relation that “aggregate demand equals the sum of GDP plus the change in debt”.
Posted on October 19, 2010 by Steve Keen
Top of page
Otmar Issing, the former chief economist of the European Central Bank and the German Bundesbank,
is a genial number-cruncher who believes in the overall benefits of European integration
has turned virulently pessimistic over the European single currency.
In a marked change from his relative sanguinity during his eight years at the ECB,
he terms member countries’ unreliability on economic policies “a basic design flaw of monetary union.”
David Marsh, Market Watch, Jan. 10, 2011
Highly recommended
If the euro zone is truly to put the debt crisis behind it,
three very painful measures are going to be needed
“The sovereign debt crisis in the euro area periphery is closely tied up with a suppressed banking crisis
throughout the euro area — core and periphery”
according to Citi Chief Economist Willem Buiter, CNBC 7/1 2011
Highly recommended
Non-farm payrolls increased 103,000, below economists' expectations for 175,000.
The unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent, the lowest since May 2009, from 9.8 percent in November.
CNBC 7/1 2011
Top of page
The destruction of wealth - that of investors, including more-or-less anyone saving for a pension - has been savage, running to tens of billions of pounds in each case.
But for RBS, the Financial Services Authority as watchdog has already ruled - just before Christmas - that there was no wrongdoing.
Robert Peston, BBC, 4 January 2011
Between the beginning of 2008 and the end of 2009, the losses on loans made by Lloyds and HBOS combined were £39bn
- of which the vast bulk was contributed by HBOS (which became a part of Lloyds two years ago).
Robert Peston, BBC, 4 January 2011
Under den senaste femårsperioden har inflationen, räknat i KPI, varit i snitt ca 1,5 procent per år.
Men i Riksbankens beräkning av prishöjningarna i landet ingår inte bostadspriserna.
Priserna på bostadsrätter i Storstockholm har under samma femårsperiod stigit med över 13 procent per år.
Detta samtidigt som de nominella lönerna i Stockholm under samma period stigit med endast drygt 3 procent per år.
Björn Jonasson och Gustav Almqvist, SvD Brännpunkt 6 januari 2011
Att ränteavdragen är heligare än påven fick Fredrik Reinfeldt lära sig redan 2006.
I Ekots partiledarutfrågning inför valet det året öppnade Reinfeldt för sänkt avdragsrätt som ett sätt att betala för löftet om slopad fastighetsskatt.
”Jag vill inte skapa nervositet på bostadsmarknaden, men
jag tycker att man också ska titta på ränteavdragen”, sade Reinfeldt.
Peter Wolodarski, signerat DN 9/1 2011
Det finns en berättigad oro för att en prisbubbla på fastigheter nu håller på att utvecklas.
En begränsad minskning av ränteavdraget är en effektiv och träffsäker åtgärd
Carl B Hamilton, ekonomisk-politisk talesperson och riksdagsledamot (fp), DN Debatt 5/1 2011
Under 2009 gjorde svenskarna ränteavdrag för 80 miljarder kronor.
Det gjorde att staten fick in nära 21 miljarder mindre i skatt.
– Framöver dock, tror vi att ränteavdragen stiger kraftigt i takt med att ränteläget höjs
Ekot 4/1 2011
Folkpartiets förslag skulle slå mot högt belånade bostadsrätts- och villaägare utan några större kapitalinkomster, menar Villaägarnas riksförbund.
”Man straffar fattiga för att gynna rika”, säger vice förbundsdirektör Joacim Olsson.
DI 5/1 2011
Top of page
"The most important graph of the year"
Gavyn Davies, blogsft, December 22 2010
Top of page
Money and Credit – There Is A Difference
The Link between Money and Credit in the Fractionally Reserved Banking System
Pater Tenebrarum, December 18th, 2010
Suppose that the U.S. economy were to grow at 4 percent a year
Even with that kind of growth the unemployment rate would be close to 9 percent
at the end of this year, and still above 8 percent at the end of 2012.
Even with pretty good growth, are unemployment rates that not long ago would have been considered catastrophic — because they are.
Behind those dry statistics lies a vast landscape of suffering and broken dreams.
And the arithmetic says that the suffering will continue as far as the eye can see.
Paul Krugman NYT 2/1 2010
Top of page
Commercial Real Estate
One dirty secret in the financial world is that the lack of drama in the CRE sector
has partly arisen because banks on both sides of the Atlantic have been “evergreening” loans
– or in essence extending the maturities – and practising forbearance to avoid recognising losses.
Gillian Tett FT December 30 2010
Top of page
Palme bröt med svensk modell
Olof Palme medverkade till att samförståndsmodellen på arbetsmarknaden bröt ihop.
Men i de biografier om honom som nyligen kommit ut sägs väldigt lite om hans ansvar
Svante Nycander Axess Nr 9 2010
Top of page
"There has been an effective moratorium on foreclosure," said Roubini.
CNBC 28 Dec 2010
"12 million households are already in negative equity and 8 million more have an LTV btw 95 and 100%.
Thus even a 5% fall in home price will push an extra 8 million in negative equity
with risk of millions walking away from their home—i.e. jingle mail," Roubini wrote CNBC 28 Dec 2010
Top of page
Oil is back above $90 a barrel.
What the commodity markets are telling us is that we’re living in a finite world, in which the rapid growth of emerging economies is placing pressure on limited supplies of raw materials, pushing up their prices.
Paul Krugman NYT December 26, 2010
Top of page
Dante Cinque had buyers lined up even before opening
Ferrari’s first Polish showroom, taking over the Warsaw site formerly occupied by the Communist Party.
Cinque, general manager of Ferrari Warszawa, said in the store on Nowy Swiat Street,
Bloomberg Dec 28, 2010
Palme Om SAF och löntagarfonderna - 1981
Youtube
Top of page
– Det finns inga indikationer på att bostadspriserna är ohållbara
eller oförenliga med en hög efterfrågan och ett måttligt utbud.
Lars E O Svensson e24 28/12 2010
Ny topp för hushållens förmögenhet
De svenska hushållens nettoförmögenhet ökade med 244 miljarder kronor till 7.264 miljarder Q3 2010, vilket är den högsta nominella nivån någonsin, enligt SEB:s sparbarometer.
DN/TT 2010-12-20
Allt fler skjuter reavinstskatten från sina bostadsaffärer framför sig.
Nära 600 000 svenskar har i dag fått uppskov på en tidigare reavinst.
På fem år har den uppskjutna skatten närapå fördubblats till drygt 241 miljarder kronor
DN 21/12 Reporter Thorbjörn Spängs
Top of page
In Hoc Anno Domini
When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.
Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long. Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.
Read more here
Top of page
Unscientific but entertaining estimates of how long citizens would need to work
to afford a 100-square-metre apartment in central Beijing, which currently sells for about Rmb3m ($450,000)
FT December 23 2010
Top of page
Look and learn from across the Irish Sea
A generation ago it would have seemed ridiculous to go to Ireland for economics lessons. Not any more
George Osborne, numera finansminister, The Times February 23, 2006
The Bank of England's most consistently interesting economist had some bad news today
He thinks that those current-account imbalances are likely to get bigger, probably a lot bigger, in the next 10 to 20 years - and there may not be very much that anyone can do about it.
Stephanie Flanders, BBC , 21 December 2010
Top of page
Borrowed time
Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream. By Christopher Whalen.
The Economist print Dec 16th 2010
USA har i genomsnitt haft en marginellt negativ realränta sedan januari 2002, vilket ledde till en ohygglig fastighetsbubbla, som i sin tur orsakade den stora recessionen i hela världen.
Märkligt nog håller Riksbanken på att upprepa den amerikanska centralbankens misstag.
Varför vill någon upprepa det största ekonomiska misstag världen sett efter att kommunismen föll?
Anders Åslund, DN Debatt 22/12 2010
*
Anders Åslund och den svenska fastighetsbubblan
Rolf Englund blog 22/12 2010
Den svenska bostadsbubblan
SvD maj år 2000
Highly Recommended
Top of page
Wellcome Trust, which has amassed a £14.5 billion investment fortune,
said that it had sold its last bond in April as it positioned itself for a rise in inflation.
the country is facing its biggest inflationary threat for 20 years
The Times 16/12 2010
Top of page
US Treasuries last week suffered their biggest two-day sell-off
since the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008.
Daily Telegraph 11 Dec 2010
Top of page
Ingen bostadsbubbla på Östermalm
Richard Lagerling, mäklare i Stockholm, Brännpunkt 15 december 2010
Huset används som bankomat
Även befintliga villa- och bostadsrättsägare tar upp nya lån på sina hus.
e24 2010-12-14
Snittpriset för ett hus i Stockholmsområdet har gått upp till 3,7 miljoner kronor.
Det är högre än Londonområdet, där medelpriset uppges vara 3,3 miljoner kronor, enligt SEB:S Johan Javeus
DI 13/12 2010
Top of page
Long-term unemployment
It is unprecedented in post-World War II U.S. history to have 3% of the labor force unemployed for over a year,"
Narayana Kocherlakota, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said in a recent speech.
Fortune 13/12 2010
Top of page
The big financial economy and markets event of the past few days has been
a sharp fall in the price of US government debt,
whose corollary is a rise in the implicit interest rate
Robert Peston 13 December 2010
Top of page
Den svenska banksektorn är riskfylld eftersom den
är stor,
är exponerad mot länder som har stora obalanser i sin ekonomi,
samt på grund av att bostadspriser och utlåning under lång tid har ökat kraftigt.
Sandro Scocco och Magnus Lindmark, DN Debatt 12/12 2010
Top of page
The graph shows the U.S. trade deficit,
with and without petroleum
CalculatedRisk December 12, 2010
Higly Recommended
Top of page
The best interpretation of our current difficulties is that we’re suffering from a deleveraging shock,
and that the economy will need support until over-leveraged players have had time to work down their debt.
Paul Krugman 9 december 2010
Top of page
Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said he
fears the euro will face a "high noon" moment of reckoning early in the New Year.
BBC 8 December 2010
Top of page
In its financial stability report, the ECB warned that some banks are overreliant on ECB funds.
9 December 2010 - Financial Stability Review December 2010
Martin Wolf about low interest rates and leverage
December 9 2010
Top of page
Bank runs have not recurred (after Norther Rock), in spite of the eurozone’s continuing crisis.
But the calm ignores a writhing nightmare of worries behind the doors of once unquestionably sound institutions from Dublin to Athens.
Financial Times December 8 2010
The total value lost since the housing market's peak in 2006 is $9 trillion
American homes are expected to be worth $1.7 trillion less in 2010 than they were worth last year
This year's drop in home values is 63% bigger than the $1 trillion dip in 2009
CNN 9/12 2010
Gordon Brown:
'We have a major crisis in the euro area'
The enormous liabilities of the eurozone's banks are
a serious and substantial accident waiting to happen.
BBC, 8 December 2010
Top of page
"Det är viktigt att bromsa en bubbla tidigt"
Belåningsgraden för svenska hushåll nu högre än innan 1990-talskrisen,
och högre än för amerikanska hushåll.
Hushållens skulduppbyggnad och riskerna för en ny bubbla på bostadsmarknaden.
Svenskt Näringsliv 9/12 2010
Reinfeldt: Vi har ingen bostadsbubbla
DI 2010-12-09 15:58
Anders Borg: "Bopriserna måste bromsas"
Rolf Englund blog 7/12 2010
*
Bostadspriserna är en av de mer allvarliga riskerna mot svensk ekonomi i ett medelfristigt perspektiv.
Men att vidta åtgärder för att dämpa stigande bostadspriser ligger inte i närtid för regeringen.
Anders Borg, 2009-11-04
Top of page
Top of page
The Japanese government Friday confirmed the country's first outbreak of a high-risk bird flu in three years,
though it stressed that there was no evidence the disease had spread beyond chickens.
The report came two weeks after Hong Kong reported the first human case there since 2003
Wall Street Journal 3/12, 2010, 3:57 P.M. ET
Top of page
Direct
Oil Price 90 dollar
CNN
Är friheten hotad i USA?
15 miljoner arbetslösa
Rolf Englund blog 4/12
Top of page
Pimco's McCulley to Leave Investing for Think Tank
Bloomberg Dec 3, 2010
DN Ekonomi 30 november 2010
"Bankerna har god motståndskraft"
En ökad oro för länder med statsfinansiella problem kan leda till att de finansiella marknadernas funktionssätt påverkas. Detta kan i sin tur påverka de svenska bankernas tillgång till marknadsfinansiering.
Det finns också risker som grundar sig i den svenska bostadsmarknaden som kan medföra refinansieringsrisker för de svenska bankerna.
Riksbanken 2010-12-02
Shiller was right about market irrationality then, and he’s still right now
— with two big bubbles that he called correctly under his belt.
The question we should ask, however, is why the economics profession has been so resistant to the obvious.
Paul Krugman December 3, 2010
Top of page
The lessons of 1979-82
Paul Krugman July 30, 2009
Top of page
The number of unemployed Americans rose to 15.1 million
The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent,
Payrolls increased 39,000, less than the most pessimistic projection of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News,
The jobless rate rose to a seven-month high, while hours worked and earnings stagnated.
Bloomberg Dec 3, 2010
Rep. Mike Pence, a Republican from Indiana
"The Fed can print money, but they can't print jobs,"
"Printing money is no substitute for sound fiscal policy
CNN December 3, 2010
Top of page
Interactive overview of global house prices
Who’d have guessed that home prices in South Africa have risen more than anywhere else over the last seven years?
Not surprisingly, Hong Kong sits directly below South Africa in the right-most portion of the chart
followed by Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden.
The Economist
European Union states have underwritten their financial sectors
with 4.5 trillion euros ($5.9tn) of aid since the banking crisis hit.
Sweden 161.6 bn euros
BBC December 1, 2010 with nice list
Top of page
One can interpret the intransigence of the German government and its EU allies in two ways.
First, they understand neither economics nor politics.
Alternatively, policy makers in Germany – and in France and Britain – are scared to death over what Ireland restructuring its bank debt would do to their own banking systems.
Barry Eichengreen
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Otmar Issing
President Center for Financial Studies
Top of page
Under a floating exchange rate, some of the pressure would be relieved by a rising exchange rate in the boom and a falling rate in the bust.
With a pegged rate, the collapse in the currency would normally restore competitiveness and growth.
In a currency union, these safety valves are lost. Instead, we have a joint credit and competitiveness crisis.
The solution for the loss of competitiveness is a sharp fall in prices.
But that worsens the credit crisis: this, then, is debt deflation, as Ireland knows
Martin Wolf, FT November 30 2010
Top of page
Probably one of the best pieces of analytical commentary we have yet read on the eurozone situation
Once the dust finally settles Europe will either be a unified country
with fiscal sovereignty firmly established in Berlin or Brussels,
or it will be fragmented with little chance of reunion.
Michael Petis via Rolf Englund blog 24/11 2010
Irland gick in i den finansiella och ekonomiska krisen utan underskott och med närmast exemplariskt skötta statsfinanser.
Kanske är vi i Sverige blinda för att vi befinner oss i en irländsk/spansk situation med lånefest och, än så länge, stigande bostadspriser.
Rolf Englund blog 21/11 2010Top of page
I Sverige har bostadspriserna rusat i höjden med hela 116 procent på tio år.
Det är lika mycket som i Spanien och betydligt mer än på krisdrabbade Irland
där priserna stigit med 34 procent sedan år 2000, enligt SEB.
Expressen 24/11 2010
The ideas that sustained the pre-crisis policy framework have been thoroughly discredited
Among these ideas, the central and most clearly falsified are the supposed “Great Moderation” in economic volatility and the “Efficient Financial Markets Hypothesis”.
John Quiggin, FT November 29 2010
Top of page
Portugal is the next example of a country to demonstrate that austerity in the middle of a financial crisis is a sure recipe for disaster.
The mood in the bond markets is deteriorating sharply, as Portuguese, and Spanish, spreads reach new records,
amid expectation that the crisis is very certain to spill over to Portugal, and possibly even to Spain.
FT Deutschland makes the remark the Portuguese spreads are about as high now as the Greek spreads
were ahead of the rescue.
Eurointelligence 24/11 2010
Top of page
The Irish bailout is not, after all, what one normally thinks of as a bailout
— it’s not like the Texas S&L bailout, where national taxpayers assumed the losses of failed Texas banks.
It’s simply an agreement to lend Ireland funds at more or less safe market rates.
We can also see why the bailout isn’t likely to succeed. The basic situation is that given the cost of rescuing Ireland’s banks
and the damage harsh austerity is inflicting on Ireland’s economy,
investors are understandably skeptical that the Irish government will actually be able to meet its commitments.
Paul Krugman New York Times November 23, 2010
Top of page
The eurozone is pressing ahead with the same approach it has followed ever since the collapse of Lehmans
When in doubt, sign another blank cheque to private creditors, and try not to think about the money, or the moral hazard.
Stephanie Flanders, the BBC's economics editor, 22 November 2010
Top of page
Nobel Laureate Diamond Is Unqualified for Fed
Peter Diamond, the Nobel Prize-winning economist nominated for the Federal Reserve Board, should be rejected by the Senate and sent home to Massachusetts. There, where he is a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he can do the least harm to U.S. monetary policy.
bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-22/nobel-winner-diamond-is-bad-choice-for-fed-commentary-by-mark-a-calabria.html
Är Diamond, Mortensen och Pissarides värda Nobelpriset?
Rolf Englund blog 11/10 2010
Finansmarknadsminister Peter Norman:
De svenska hushållen har en hög skuldsättning och det vore oroande om
den snabba ökningen av skulderna skulle fortsätta i flera år till.
Affärsvärlden 22/11 2010
Top of page
"All The Devils Are Here"
The finger was pointed at greedy traders, cowardly legislators and clueless home buyers,
And it proves that the crisis ultimately wasn't about finance at all; it was about human nature.
Says the publisher
Top of page
Mark-to-Make-Believe Perfumes Rotten Loans
Jonathan Weil Bloomberg Opinion Nov 18, 2010
Top of page
Ireland borrowed and spent itself into a financial crisis.
Irish banks borrowed abroad and re-lent the money to Irish home buyers on the expectation that home prices would continue to climb.
When the real estate market collapsed, borrowers crashed, the banks came tumbling after, and so did the rest of the economy.
Sound familiar?
Jeffry A. Frieden, a professor of government at Harvard, author of Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century."
New York Times November 17, 2010
Top of page
Europe heads back into the storm
Ireland’s basic problem is that it now has to choose between its own sovereign solvency and the solvency of its banks.
Other European countries – in and out of the eurozone – may soon face the same choice.
In such a world, keeping banks afloat with public capital risks sinking the sovereign
– and with it, the whole banking system.
Financial Times editorial November 17 2010
Top of page
The Dark Ages, Returned In Full
Schumpeter, Wolfgang Schauble, the government of China,
Narayanan Kocherlakota, and Sarah Palin
Paul Krugman November 17, 2010
Top of page
Even in the best case, the government will have to pour an extra $6 billion into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
whose implicit public guarantees suddenly became explicit when the housing market deteriorated in 2008.
A more likely projection calls for a $19 billion injection
CNBC 17/11 2010
Unemployed Americans have collected $319 billion in jobless benefits over the past three years
Heated debate in Congress in coming weeks over whether to extend this safety net for the fifth time this year.
Lawmakers must act by Nov. 30 or two million people will start losing extended benefits next month.
CNN 17/11 2010
Top of page
In The Age of Deleveraging, Gary Shilling notes that with deleveraging comes slow economic growth,
and he details nine reasons why real GDP will rise only about 2% annually in the years ahead
— far below the 3.3% growth it takes just to keep the unemployment rate stable.
John Mauldin 15/11 2010 with nice chart of comm real estate
Top of page
Euro under siege after Portugal hits panic button
'If the euro fails, then Europe fails,'
warned the German Chancellor Angela Merkel last night
DT Tuesday 16 November 2010 with nice pic
Europe stumbles blindly towards its 1931 moment
Unless the ECB takes fast and dramatic action, it risks destroying the currency it is paid to manage,
and allowing a political catastrophe to unfold in Europe.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 14 Nov 2010
It is not an exaggeration to say that there would not be a banking system in Ireland - and therefore not an economy in any conventional sense
- if it weren't for the generosity of the European Central Bank in providing loans to Irish banks
that the markets won't provide.
Robert Peston, the BBC's business editor, 15/11 2010
Top of page
De svenska hushållens lån i banker och bostadsinstitut ökade under tredje kvartalet med 53 miljarder kronor.
Så mycket har lånen aldrig tidigare ökat under ett tredje kvartal, enligt Statistiska centralbyrån (SCB).
Hushållens totala lån uppgick vid kvartalets slut till 2.369 miljarder kronor.
DN Ekonomi 15/11 2010
De globala ekonomiska obalanserna fortsätter att växa och med dem skuldsättningen hos de redan hårt skuldsatta och ansamlingen av allt osäkrare fordringar hos kreditorerna.
Risknivån i den globala balansräkningen ser alltmer ohälsosam och ohållbar ut.
Den växande valutaoron är ett tydligt tecken på att spänningarna börjar närma sig bristningsgränsen.
Per Lindvall e24 2010-11-15
Top of page
G20 show how not to run the world
This is not collective leadership but joint abdication of power.
Financial Times editorial November 12 2010
Top of page
Is the discipline of economics succumbing to a twinge of self-doubt now? Or at least some heresy? Perhaps. In the last couple of years, the reputation of the profession has suffered badly, as a host of commentators – including the Queen of England herself – have asked why this well-paid priesthood failed to predict the financial crunch.
Gillian Tett, FT November 12 2010
Top of page
History lessons for a world out of balance
The prevailing rhetoric about currency wars smacks of the 1930s
John Plender, FT November 11 2010
Top of page
Europas stabilitet är inte längre given
Om boken Peer Steinbrück, tidigare Tysklands finansminister, Unterm Strich
Rolf Gustavsson, SvD 6 november 2010
Top of page
Raghuram Rajan, one of the few economists to see the financial crisis coming,
wins the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award
FT 28/10/2010
Top of page
Bernanke Leaps into a Liquidity Trap
If consumers wish to reduce their debt, and companies do not have a desirable menu of potential investments, there is little benefit in reducing interest rates
John P. Hussman, at John Mauldin 5/11 2010
Keynes Paradox of Thrift
The reason that the current recovery is below par is that the economy is experiencing a massive paradox of thrift.
Michael E. Lewitt, at John Mauldin, 1/11 2010
Top of page
Ben S. Bernanke’s push to jump-start the U.S. economy this week may weaken the dollar
Within 33 hours this week, fallout from the Fed could cause even ECB change course if the euro surges
Bloomberg 1/11 2010
Top of page
The problem is that, even after more than two years of near-zero official rates and huge amounts of stimulus spending, economies such as the US have failed to grow as strongly as hoped.
The hangover effect of the debt-fuelled house-buying and consumption binge that started to unravel three years ago.
People are no longer able to borrow unless they have a good credit history. In any event, many people do not want to borrow.
They are focused instead on reducing the debts they have taken on – a process called deleveraging – either by choice or because they cannot roll over debts with new loans.
FT October 31 2010
Top of page
How to Restore the American Dream
Americans fear that we are in the midst of not a cyclical downturn but a structural shift,
one that poses huge new challenges to the average American job, pressures the average American wage and endangers the average American Dream. The middle class, many Americans have come to believe, is being hollowed out.
I think they are right.
Fareed Zakaria Time Magazine, Oct. 21, 2010
Top of page
The Economist, QE och finanspolitisk stimulans
Rolf Englund blog 2010-10-29
Top of page
In the spring of 2010, fiscal austerity became fashionable.
I use the term advisedly: the sudden consensus among Very Serious People that everyone
must balance budgets now now now wasn’t based on any kind of careful analysis.
It was more like a fad, something everyone professed to believe because
that was what the in-crowd was saying.
Paul Krugman, NYT October 21, 2010
Top of page
USA hotar med tullar och extremt expansiv penningpolitik
för att få fart på den inhemska ekonomin, pressa upp inflationen och därmed driva ner värdet på dollarn.
Källan till striden om valutapolitiken är den traditionella: växelkursen är bestämd av staten – inte av marknaden.
Lars Jonung, Kolumn DN 27/10 2010
Top of page
Home price indexes; Down again
THE storm clouds have been gathering for months. Almost immediately after the expiration of the government's tax credit for homebuyers,
it became clear that American housing market stability had been remarkably dependent on the generous subsidy.
The Economist Oct 26th 2010
Top of page
Utlåningen för bostadsändamål uppgick sammanlagt till 1,976 miljarder kronor
i slutet av september, en ökning med 9,3 procent jämfört med samma månad föregående år.
DI 27/10 2010
Top of page
They Knew What They Were Selling
Warning to Mr. Robert Rubin and Management
Testimony from Mr. Richard Bowen, former senior vice-president and business chief underwriter with CitiMortgage Inc. This was given to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission Hearing on Subprime Lending and Securitization and Government Sponsored Enterprises.
John Mauldin 23/10 2010
Top of page
Come and meet the world's leading Austrian economist
Jesús Huerta de Soto, who is delivering the annual Hayek Lecture at the LSE
Daniel Hannan October 22nd, 2010
Top of page
När det gäller hushållens ökande skuldsättning säger Riksbankschefen att takten i skuldökningen inte är hållbar på sikt.
E24 26/10 2010
Top of page
Mervyn King says banking must be reinvented
I am away from the mothership for a few days, but I could not resist beaming back a few thoughts about
the remarkable speech given last night in New York by Mervyn King,
Banking: from Bagehot to Basel, and back again
Robert Peston, BBC 26 October 2010
Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has attacked the 'absurd' level of risk taken on by banks
He called the banks' reliance on short-term debt to meet funding needs in 2008 an "accident waiting to happen".
BBC 26/10 2010
Investors accepted a yield of minus 0.55 per cent on $10bn of Treasury Inflation Protected Securities
– or Tips – which compensate holders if the consumer price index rises.
Financial Times 26/10 2010
Top of page
Ten-year Treasury yields fell this month to their lowest levels since the dark days of January 2009.
TIPS are at similarly historical levels, lowest since the government started selling them in 1997.
A low yield means demand is high for TIPS, which offer investors additional annual returns to make up for the rate of inflation.
The gap, or breakeven, between the two yields implies what investors expect inflation to be.
WSJ 25/10 2010
Top of page
“Economics is a science of fashions – Keynes and ‘pump-priming’ at one time, Friedman and monetarism at another,”
the Franco-American mathematician, Benoît Mandelbrot, who died last week at 85, wrote in "The (Mis)behaviour of Markets", a book he co-authored with Richard L. Hudson in 2004.
By Christopher Caldwell, FT October 22 2010
Top of page
No governments have yet fallen, and no sovereign debt has yet been repudiated.
The key word is "yet."
Irwin Stelzer, director of economic-policy studies at the Hudson Institute
Wall Street Journal 25/10 2010
Top of page
The new French revolution
Youths as young as 15 are turning France into a battleground in a violent protest over pensions.
Are they becoming unstoppable?
The Times 24 October 2010
Top of page
British Budget Cuts 'A Dangerous Experiment'
British Prime Minister David Cameron is embarking on a painful period of austerity.
Some economists say his savings plan is dangerous. Some German columnists agree.
Der Spiegel 21/10 2010
Of the 1.2 million workers at risk of losing federal benefits, 387,000 are workers who were recently laid-off and are now receiving the six months (26 weeks) of regular state benefits.
After exhausting state benefits, these workers would be left to fend for themselves
in a job market with just one job opening for every five unemployed workers
and an unemployment rate that has exceeded nine percent for 17 months in a row.
CalculatedRisk on 22/10 2010
Top of page
Sedan 1997 har de svenska bostadspriserna stigit med 173 procent.
Bara i Sydafrika (421 procent), Australien (220 procent) och Storbritannien (181 procent) har priserna stigit mer.
Enligt Economists kalkyler är de svenska bostäderna övervärderade med 41,5 procent.
Viktor Munkhammar, DI 2010-10-22
Top of page
Sarkozy warning as French strikes hit power supply
BBC 20 October 2010, with nice video.
Top of page
Fannie/Freddie Bailout Could Total $363 Billion
Diana Olick 21 Oct 2010
Top of page
If you think we are gloomy, you should listened to Mervyn King, /chef för Bank of England/
who yesterday predicted a 1930s style global meltdown, unless policy makers can agree a common approach
to managing currencies (something we they will never do, even if faced with a trade war).
Eurointelligence 20/10 2010
Top of page
What are we learning about the relative role of monetary and fiscal policies?
As Joseph Stiglitz argued in the FT this week... Monetary policy has worked, in practice, via credit expansion.
It is, as a result, at least partly responsible for the debt crisis of today.
Who can now confidently state that reliance on a policy which worked by financing overpriced housing was better than using surplus savings for higher public investment?
Martin Wolf, FT October 19 2010
Top of page
A group of influential hedge fund managers with assets of about $100 billion
has launched a stinging attack on central banks and regulators for bailing out stricken financial institutions.
The Times October 18 2010
Top of page
Laughable
35 business leaders back Osborne's cuts
The 35 also make one statement that will amuse many economists.
They say "everyone knows that when you have a debt problem,
delaying the necessary action will make it worse not better".
Robert Peston, BBC 17 October 2010
Top of page
Ben Bernanke declared war today - not on China, but on the possibility of deflation.
He knows that a vicious cycle of slow growth, stagnant or falling prices and high unemployment poses a much greater threat to America's way of life than China's silly exchange rate.
But like it or not, the exchange rate will be caught up in the Fed's response.
Stephanie Flanders, BBC 15 October 2010
Top of page
It is folly to place all our trust in the Fed
The US Federal Reserve may make funds available to banks at close to zero interest rates,
but if the banks make those funds available it is at a much higher rate.
Joseph Stiglitz, FT October 18 2010
Top of page
French strikes force petrol stations to shut
BBC 18 October 2010, with nice video
Top of page
It is fitting that on September 15 Japan, the world's only major economy battling actual deflation, initiated what has come to be a global round of quantitative easing.
Quantitative easing involves a central bank creating money to buy securities, adding reserves to the banking system, and hoping to increase lending and economic activity in the process.
By John H. Makin AEI Online October 2010
Top of page
Konventionell ekonomisk visdom säger att det är ohållbart att i längden ha så stora obalanser i världshandeln som vi haft sedan början av 2000-talet.
Länder med underskott i utrikeshandeln måste ta sig samman och och sluta att leva på utlandslån (USA, Storbritannien och PIIGS-länderna).
Här är euro-området en svag punkt. Den europeiska centralbanken ECB har en mycket rigid inställning till QE. En bedömare som professor Nouriel Roubini menar att ECB är beredd att offra PIIGS-länderna för att slippa vidta QE med hänvisning till inflationsfaran.
Roubini pekade i förrgår på att risken för PIIGS-länderna istället är deflation. Nu utmålar han allvarliga risker för att en ny världsdepression är under uppsegling.
Danne Nordling 16 oktober 2010
...
Så kan det bli ny världsdepression
Jag är personligen något skeptisk till Roubinis förutsägelser.
Han hade naturligtvis rätt i att peka på det fallande bostadsbyggandet som en allvarlig risk för en kraftig konjunkturnedgång.
Men när han gjorde detta i september 2006 hade de snabbt uppdrivna bostadsinvesteringarna redan fallit under mer än ett års tid (diagr).
Att han då sågs som en Kassandra säger nog mera om det socialpsykologiska klimatet bland politiker och ekonomer i USA än om Roubinis yrkesskicklighet.
Danne Nordling 16 oktober 2010
...
Roubini vänder sig mot synen att skuldkrisen ska lösas genom att alla länder med underskott i den offentliga sektorn ska bedriva åtstramningspolitik.
Det leder till deflation och att allt blir ont värre.
Men dessvärre är Roubinis sätt att måla fan på väggen något som inte kan negligeras.
Den mera nyanserade analys som Barry Eichengreen framförde i juli ser vi inte mycket av längre. Det bådar inte gott.
Danne Nordling 16 oktober 2010
Top of page
Robert Mundell — the Columbia University professor
who advocated the hard-money, low-tax policy mix that broke stagflation in the early 1980s,
and who received the Nobel Prize in 1999 for his work on exchange rates —
He thinks the European Central Bank, along with the Federal Reserve, should intervene in currency markets
to limit movement in the world's single most important exchange rate
Wall Street Journal, 16/10 2010
Top of page
All western governments face severe difficulties in the years ahead
House prices have fallen and interest rates are low, but in Britain a mortgage of three times earnings will not buy a home on the edge of
a provincial city for even a relatively high-income family on say, £60,000 a year.
Max Hastings, FT October 15 2010
Top of page
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said additional monetary stimulus may be warranted
because inflation is too low and unemployment is too high.
Blooomberg Oct 15, 2010 2:43 PM GMT+0200
Dollarn föll två öre mot kronan efter Bernankes uttalande, ned till 6:53 kronor per dollar.
Det är den lägsta nivån sedan september 2008.
Top of page
The deliberate attempt by the Federal Reserve to create more inflation is beginning to have
a big impact on financial markets.
Yesterday the dollar came under selling, and commodity prices increased.
The dollar fell to a 15-year low (nominal that is!) against the yen, and an eight-month low against the euro
Copper reached a two year year, and gold rose further to $1387, an all time nominal high.
Eurointelligence 15/41 2010
Top of page
"Sverige har världens dyraste hus, i förhållande till disponibel inkomst.
Och vi har världens största räntedoping.
Det är osäkert om det är en bubbla, men det finns skäl till oro"
Pär Magnusson, nordisk chefsanalytiker på Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) TT/DI 15/10 2010
Top of page
Stockholm dyrast i Norden
Bopriserna fortsätter att stiga i Stockholms innerstad och enligt SBAB:s mäklarstatistik hamnade
det genomsnittliga kvadratmeterpriset i september för en trerumslägenhet på 56 152 kronor.
– Om vi antar att en genomsnittstrea är på 75 kvadratmeter så motsvarar detta 4 211 400 kronor
SvD 14 oktober 2010
Top of page
The trade deficit widened 8.8 percent to $46.3 billion in August
CNN 14 october 2010 with nice chart
Top of page
30-Year Mortgage Rate Hits Decades-Low of 4.19 %
CNBC 14 Oct 2010
Top of page
Euro disintegration was never a great risk.
The real danger was and remains a collapse of Europe’s financial system
and the slump this would trigger. A sovereign default could easily have repercussions exceeding even those of the Lehman bankruptcy two years ago.
The fact that the aid to Greece was a surreptitious /Obtained, done, or made by clandestine or stealthy means/ rescue of German banks was an important, if unmentioned, reason for Berlin’s willingness to play along.
Financial Times editorial October 12 2010
Top of page
At the current rate of job creation, the nation would need nine more years to recapture the jobs lost during the recession.
And that doesn’t even account for five million or six million jobs needed in that time to keep pace with an expanding population.
Median house prices have dropped 20 percent since 2005. It would take 13 years for housing prices to climb back to their peak
Commercial vacancies are soaring, and it could take a decade to absorb the excess in many of the largest cities.
New York Times 13 Oct 2010
Top of page
Rebalancing
The first is internal rebalancing – a return to reliance on private demand in advanced countries and retrenchment of the fiscal deficits that opened in the crisis.
The second is external rebalancing – greater reliance on net exports by the US and some other advanced countries and on domestic demand by some emerging countries, notably China.
Martin Wolf 12 october 2010
Top of page
From Basel III to Bern I
Patrick Raaflaub, Wall Street Journal 12 october 2010
Top of page
Treasury yields continue free fall
Yields on 10-year 2.36% lowest level since January 2009
CNN 12 october 2010 with nice chart
Top of page
The government currently estimates that 2.2 million jobs were lost from April of 2009 through March of this year,
a significant portion of the 7.8 million jobs lost since the start of 2008.
a little-noticed note at the bottom of September's jobs report, the Labor Department said it now appears there were 366,000 additional jobs lost during the 12 months that ended in March
CNN October 12, 2010
Top of page
”Som banker fungerar i dag är den enda verkliga tillgången förtroende.
Om förtroendet försvinner är det slut – ungefär som ett pyramidspel”, säger Larry Kotlikoff.
Spelet kallas bråkdelsreserver eller fractional reserve banking.
Andreas Cervenka, SvD/e24, 2010-10-10
Top of page
The US is due on Tuesday to propose its own so-called “resolution” regime that would
allow officials to stabilise a big, distressed bank, sell off assets over time and force creditors to take a discount on the value of their debt,
without taxpayer money or market disruption
RE: Holy Grail found ?
FT October 11 2010
Top of page
Är Diamond, Mortensen och Pissarides värda Nobelpriset?
Men transaktionskostnader läste jag om på universitetet redan på på 1960-talet.
Rolf Englund blog 2010-10-11
Top of page
Europe is the region in the world most at risk of losing a currency war.
Unlike normal nation states, the eurozone lacks a legal and institutional framework to deal effectively with such a situation.
The most likely outcome would be a further large real appreciation of the euro,
which would ultimately lead to a significant slowdown in exports and growth.
One of the numerous toxic effects likely to occur in such a scenario is the imminent failure of the European bank rescue strategy.
Wolfgang Münchau, FT October 10 2010
Top of page
“You can’t cut debt by borrowing.” How often have you read or heard this comment from “austerians” (a nice variant on “Austrians”),
who complain about the huge fiscal deficits that have followed the financial crisis?
The obvious response is: so what?
Martin Wolf, September 26, 2010
Top of page
The euro:
Dinner on the edge of the abyss
On a spring evening, a group of the world’s most powerful policymakers sat down to dinner at 501 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Eleven days earlier, European leaders and the International Monetary Fund had promised Greece a €45bn ($62bn) bail-out. But the discussions at 501 Pennsylvania Avenue, hosted by Jim Flaherty, Canada’s finance minister, established that this was likely to be far too little.
Tony Barber, FT October 10 2010
Top of page
What is the use of economics if it cannot answer even such a basic question?
Two years ago at the height of the financial crisis, the Queen challenged staff of the London School of Economics with a simple but devastating question:
“Why did no one foresee this?”
the inability of professional economists in Britain and America to agree on something as important as whether
reductions in government deficits will accelerate or slow growth
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times September 29 2010
Top of page
The U.S. jobless rate was flat at 9.6 % in September,
but the government’s broader measure of unemployment rose even more to 17.1 %,
the highest rate since April and down just slightly from the October 2009 high of 17.4 %.
WSJ OCTOBER 8, 2010
Top of page
Dollarras att vänta
Redan till våren halkar dollarn under 6 kronor. Och det är bara början, spår storbanken Goldman Sachs.
Om ett år väntas kursen vara den lägsta sedan 1992.
Viktor Munkhammar, DI 2010-10-08
What made the biggest difference was companies’ response to the crisis. In most rich countries they cut hours more than bodies.
German firms last year reduced working time by the equivalent of 1.4m full-time employees.
The Economist Oct 7th 2010
Top of page
This item from June 11, 2007
Are most economists naive?
Tim Iacono On October 5, 2010
Top of page
Currency wars, trade barriers and other protectionist policies
are rising to the top of domestic political agendas as governments across the world struggle to resurrect economic growth.
After the early united front to stem the global collapse in 2008, "the momentum [of economic co-operation] is decreasing",
Dominique Strauss-Kahn said at the IMF's annual conference in Washington.
Nice (?) photo of DSK
DT 7 Oct 2010
Top of page
Video of Krugman, Feldstein and Hatzius
I'm not sure who is the most pessimistic.
CalculatedRisk on 10/07/2010
Top of page
As the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings start in Washington,
the word “deleveraging” is haunting policymakers and investors.
It is now crystal clear to everybody that debt levels were absurdly high during the credit boom.
Gillian Tett, FT October 7 2010
Top of page
Insättningsgarantin
Det är bra med ökad trygghet för spararna, bara man inte slutar att ha koll på sin bank för det.
Marja Lång, presschef på Riksgälden, DN Ekonomi pappersupplagan 7/10 2010
Riksdagen sade på onsdagen för första gången nej till ett EU-förslag med hänvisning till närhetsprincipen
Beslutet gällde två förslag från EU-kommissionen om att alla EU-länder ska bli skyldiga att låna ut pengar till andra medlemsländer som inte klarar av insättningsgaranti och investerarskydd.
Sydsvenskan 7 oktober 2010
Återinför fastighetsskatten.
”Fastigheter är en utmärkt skattebas och de möjligheter till uppskov med reavinstskatten som tidigare fanns gjorde inlåsningseffekterna minimala.
Jonas Vlachos, docent i nationalekonomi vid Stockholms Universitet, DI 6/10 2010
Top of page
The forces that will stop the imbalances are already very evident
Fiscal consolidation cannot properly occur in advanced economies until there is a strengthening in private demand.
For well rehearsed reasons, this is proving difficult to achieve.
The handover from fiscal stimulus to private demand growth isn’t happening as quickly as hoped.
Unfortunately, the private sector is still in a strongly deleveraging frame of mind.
Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph 7 Oct 2010
Top of page
"One of the most catastrophic political decision taken in post-war Europe"
The collapse of Lehman Brothers was without a doubt the single most symbolic moment of the financial crisis.
But for Europe it was on Tuesday, 30 September 2008, when the Irish prime minister gave a blanket guarantee for the entire banking sector.
Wolfgang Münchau, Eurointelligence 7/10 2010
Top of page
Warren Buffett hints at bond bubble
Investors buying bonds at the prevailing high prices are 'making a mistake,'
Fortune October 5, 2010
Top of page
Sverige klarade finanskrisen bättre än de flesta andra länder
genom att de offentliga finanserna var goda från början och regeringen fortsatte värna dem.
DN-ledare 6/10 2010
Top of page
Bostadsbankomaten lika viktig som regeringens skattesänkningar
Bolån som används för konsumtion har fyllt plånböckerna med lika mycket pengar
som alla de fyra jobbskatteavdragen tillsammans.
Men, om bopriserna planar ut är det slut på festen och tillväxten stryps.
Viktor Munkhammar, DI 2010-10-05
Top of page
If you strip away the political correctness,
Chapter Three of the IMF's World Economic Outlook more or less condemns Southern Europe to death by slow suffocation
and leaves little doubt that fiscal tightening will trap North Europe, Britain and America in slump for a long time.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 03 Oct 2010
Top of page
Joseph Stiglitz sees bleak future for euro as New Malaise takes hold
Exclusive extract: In an updated edition of his critically acclaimed book, Freefall, Joseph Stiglitz analyses the response to the financial crisis and finds new threats stalking the global economy
Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy
Amazon
Top of page
The flash crash of May 6 was sparked by a rapidly executed $4.1bn sale of stock index futures by a single institutional investor
who was hedging against the risk of a market downturn, a report by leading US regulators said on Friday.
The order was completed so quickly That it triggered wild automated selling by computer traders,
which wiped out nearly $1,000bn off the value of US shares for a period of several minutes.
FT October 1 2010
Top of page
Or maybe it’s become just too obvious that we created the financial crisis.
As even Oliver Stone showed in his movie, we borrowed all that money and thought the housing boom would never end.
We saw the risks in the disclosure documents but ignored them, or refused even to look. We heard the doomsayers and preferred to ignore them. We elected the politicians who subsidized the housing bubble, and decided which firms should live and which should die.
Maybe we have seen the face of the financial crisis. In the mirror.
Larry Ribstein.THE CREATIVE DESTROYER blogs.forbes.com Sep. 26, 2010
Top of page
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, renowned derivatives trader, university professor and author of "The Black Swan," warned
of the growing risk the nation has taken on as a result of poor decisions by the Fed and policymakers, including
trillions of dollars in taxpayer money funneled into bailouts of private industry.
"This transformation from private debt ... to public debt" is "bad" from a risk standpoint and "immoral"
Shahien Nasiripour Huffington Post 30/9 2010
Top of page
In pictures: Lehman artworks
BBC
Top of page
By a vote of 348-79, Democrats and Republicans alike put aside their acrimonious differences and agreed, at least for a moment,
to stop blaming each other for the sad state of American economic life.
Instead, they agreed to blame China.
The bill is the perfect campaign gesture, bombastic, angry, self-righteous, and without much real-world consequence.
Zachary Karabell, Huffington Post, September 30, 2010
Top of page
The IMF’s foolish praise for austerity
Some argue that we have no right to bequeath higher debt to future generations.
But why would it be wise to bequeath a smaller economy to posterity, instead?
Martin Wolf, FT September 30, 2010
Top of page
Mr Trichet and other devotees of “expansionary fiscal consolidations” believe that belt-tightening can actually aid growth in the short term?
The intellectual backing for these claims comes from a study by two Harvard economists, Alberto Alesina and Silvia Ardagna, which studied past fiscal adjustments in rich countries*.
They found that, more often than not, fiscal adjustments that relied on spending cuts boosted growth, even in the very short run.
But a new study by economists at the IMF reckons that the Harvard study was seriously flawed**.
The Economist Sep 30th 2010
Top of page
John Connally, Nixon’s secretary of the Treasury, famously told the Europeans that
the dollar “is our currency, but your problem”.
The Chinese respond in kind. In the absence of currency adjustments,
we are seeing a form of monetary warfare: in effect,
the US is seeking to inflate China, and China to deflate the US.
Both sides are convinced they are right; neither is succeeding;
and the rest of the world suffers
Martin Wolf, FT September 28 2010
Top of page
What can be done about mass unemployment?
All the wise heads agree: there are no quick or easy answers.
All the facts suggest that high unemployment in America is the result of inadequate demand — full stop.
Saying that there are no easy answers sounds wise, but it’s actually foolish
Paul Krugman, NYT, September 26, 2010
Top of page
The third graph shows the price declines from the peak
for each city included in S&P/Case-Shiller indices.
Calculated Risk 28/9 2010
Nice Chart
Top of page
We live in an amazing world. Everybody has big budget deficits and big easy money
but somehow the world as a whole cannot fully employ itself,”
said former Fed chair Paul Volcker in
Chris Whalen’s new book Inflated: How Money and Debt Built the American Dream.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 26 Sep 2010
RE: Very Important Article
Top of page
Lars E O Svensson tror inte på bostadsbubbla
SvD/e24 reporter Leif Petersen, 2010-09-27
Top of page
Bolånetaket ett slag i luften
Lånetaket på 85 procent är inget större problem för bankerna. Tvärtom.
Lånetaket gäller bolån, alltså lån med bostaden som säkerhet. Men det står bankerna fritt att ge blancolån. Det är lån utan säkerhet och därför med högre ränta.
Det är också möjligt för bankerna att kräva att en borgensman för blancolånet
ANNIKA CREUTZER, e24 2010-09-28
Top of page
Part 1 of our series on the spring’s sovereign-debt crisis.
On the Secret Committee to Save the Euro
Two months after Lehman Brothers collapsed in the fall of 2008, a small group of European leaders set up a secret task force—one so secret that they dubbed it "the group that doesn't exist."
Wall Street Journal September 24, 2010
---
Part 2 of our series on the spring’s sovereign-debt crisis.
The next day, a Friday, euro-zone leaders were due in Brussels for a quick meeting to approve the Greek package. Events were overtaking them: Lending between European banks was freezing up; investors were fleeing weaker euro nations' bonds.
Wall Street Journal 27 September 2010
Top of page
This couple is so happy because, on the advice of Money Magazine, they have opened up a home equity line of credit – they have done the number one “smartest thing” that they could do with their money.
Tim Iacono September 25, 2010
...
Seniorlån - lev på ditt boende
Känner du att det skulle vara bra med lite extra pengar varje månad? Visste du i så fall att det idag finns goda möjligheter att få en extra månadsinkomst från ditt boende?
Allt fler har upptäckt möjligheterna med att leva på sitt boende. Genom att frigöra en del av bostadens värde med hjälp av ett seniorlån skapas en extra månadsinkomst utan att du behöver sälja din bostad.
Reklam från AG Pension september 2010
Alla sedvänjor och idéer på jorden står tyvärr inte i samklang med de mänskliga rättigheterna.
I sin nyss inledda självrannsakan borde Socialdemokraterna börja med att återerövra de tidlösa upplysningsidealen.
Lena Andersson, Kolumn, DN 25/9 2010
...
Det har blivit ett mantra att regeringen skött ekonomin exceptionellt bra.
Detta trots att vår BNP i fjol sjönk med fem procent, mer än övriga Europas och dubbelt mot USA.
Lena Andersson DN 11/6 2010
Top of page
Det är inte uteslutet att ett eller flera länder så småningom kan överge euron som valuta,
säger Ottmar Issing, före detta ledamot i Europeiska centralbankens styrelse.
Ekot 23 september 2010
Top of page
A recent IMF study argues that sovereign default in today’s advanced economies (AEs) is “unnecessary, undesirable and unlikely"
The study represents the triumph of dogma over evidence and logic
Willem Buiter cit. by Tyler Durden at zerohedge 23/9 2010
Top of page
Chinese purchases of our bonds don’t help us — they hurt us.
The Japanese understand that. Why don’t we?
Paul Krugman NYT September 12, 2010
Top of page
Kronan påverkar extremt mycket. Särskilt när den går under eller över magiska gränser och hela krontal
Och under en magisk krongräns, 7 kronor, gick kronan mot dollarn på tisdagen.
Vid slutet av dagen kostade en dollar 6,96 kronor.
Samtidigt stärktes kursen mot euron till 9,14 kronor.
Så stark har inte kronan varit mot euron på nästan tre år.
DN Ekonomi 22/9 2010
Top of page
Larry Summers, the Obama administration’s top economic adviser, will step down
after the November midterm elections and return to Harvard University
FT September 21 2010
Top of page
Ask Not Whether Governments Will Default, but How
The sovereign debt crisis is not European: it is global. And it is not over.
Arnuad Mares at John Mauldin 20/9 2010
Top of page
She is just 57.
But four years after losing her job she cannot, in her darkest moments,
escape a nagging thought: she may never work again.
New York Times 20 sep 2010
Top of page
Portugal
That is what happens when you cut interest rates suddenly from 16 to 3 per cent
yields back to May crisis levels when the EU faced its "Lehman moment"
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 19 Sep 2010
Top of page
Ireland has shown what happens when you grasp the fiscal nettle, slashing public wages by 13pc –
to applause from EU elites – without offsetting monetary and exchange stimulus.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 19 Sep 2010
Top of page
Deleveraging/The Chances of a Double Dip
The good life and rapid growth that started in the early 1980s was fueled by massive financial leveraging and excessive debt, first in the global financial sector, starting in the 1970s and in the early 1980s among U.S. consumers.
That leverage propelled the dot com stock bubble in the late 1990s and then the housing bubble.
But now those two sectors are being forced to delever and in the process are transferring their debts to governments and central banks.
Gary Shilling at John Mauldin 17/9 2010
Top of page
Arbetslinjen segrar på Kuba 2010
This week the government announced it is to shed 500,000 workers, who will instead have to become self-employed or start co-operatives in just six months.
Financial Times September 17 2010
Top of page
Basel
Banks will also have to subtract items such as goodwill, some tax credits and minority investments from equity and retained earnings.
The deductions are likely to cut many banks’ equity totals by between 30 per cent and 40 per cent, according to people who have seen the data.
Brooke Masters, FT September 16 2010
Top of page
High and long-lasting unemployment represents a risk to the stability of existing democracies
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF's chief, said a double-dip recession remains unlikely
but stressed that the world has not yet escaped a deeper social crisis.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 13 Sept 2010
Top of page
Medelpriset för ett hus var drygt 2 miljoner kronor under den senaste tremånadersperioden.
I Stor-Stockholm var det genomsnittliga huspriset nästan 3,8 miljoner kronor
och i Stor-Göteborg och Stor-Malmö var det drygt 2,9 miljoner kronor.
SvD e24 2010-09-16
Top of page
”villaskattsvalet” 1979
Även om debatten om hur stora avdrag villaägarna skulle få göra på sina lån var viktig fanns det andra frågor.
Men eftersom Olof Palme gjort bort sig i en tevedebatt genom sin okunskap om huspriserna i Stockholm
– ”det hade jag ingen aning om”, sa han förvånat när han fick siffrorna – blev valrörelsen förknippad
med taxeringen av småhus.
DN Signerat Henrik Berggren 2010-09-14
...
Som bekant vill de rödgröna väcka liv i fastighetsskatten.
Här kan man ta del av varför detta, enligt Johnny Munkhammar, vore en mycket dålig idé.
Top of page
Given the combination of the expiration of the home buyer tax credit
and the increasing number of loans moving to final foreclosure,
we knew that home prices overall would take a hit, but it would take a while.
Well we're here.
Diana Olick, CNBC Real Estate Reporter, 15/9 2010
Top of page
Bostadsrättspriserna i riket som helhet steg 8 procent mellan juli och augusti,
medan villapriserna sjönk 1 procent.
De senaste tolv månaderna har bostadsrättspriserna stigit 11 procent
samtidigt som villapriserna har stigit 6 procent.
DI 15/9 2010
Top of page
Why 9/15 changed more than 9/11
Two years have elapsed since the collapse of Lehman Brothers
triggered a global financial crisis and provoked fears of a new Great Depression.
Gideon Rachman, FT September 13 2010
Top of page
Leverage was at the root of the crisis
The writer was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, and is dean of Columbia Business School.
He is co-author with Peter Navarro of ‘Seeds of Destruction: Why the Path to Economic Ruin Runs Through Washington,
and How to Reclaim American Prosperity’
Glenn Hubbard, September 13 2010
Top of page
Världens mest skuldsatta folk är rubriken för en artikel i DI 9/11 2010
”Sverige och Norge liknar varandra. Vi har stigande huspriser, hushållen lånar allt mer och skuldkvoterna närmar sig 200 procent.”
Rolf Englund blog 2010-09-11
Top of page
The Man Who Divided Germany
Why Sarrazin's Integration Demagoguery Has Many Followers
Der Spiegel 6/9 2010
Basel
Svenska bankföreningen har varnat för att svenska bankmodellen
med mycket bolån i balansräkningen
kan få problem om det införs ett absolut kapitalkrav i form av ett "hävstångsmått",
framräknat utan klassificering av bankernas utlåning i olika riskklasser.
DI/TT 2010-09-12
Regulators agree 7% capital ratio for banks
Stiff resistance from a number of countries, led by Germany, many of whose banks typically have much lower stocks of core capital in the form of equity and retained earnings
- and will have great difficulty meeting the new standard.
Robert Peston, BBC 9 September 2010
...
Baselkommittén
Dåliga nyheter för SEB, Swedbank, Handelsbanken och Nordea.
De svenska bankerna har väldigt bra kvalitet på sina tillgångar, exempelvis mycket bostadsutlåning.
Men det får man alltså inte tillgodoräkna sig i det nya måttet.
SvD/e24 2009-12-18
Top of page
Den svenska antiliberalismen är främst en bestående effekt av 70-talsradikalismen.
Den hämtar näring från social utopism, marxism och olika postmoderna läror.
Antiliberaler sprider fientliga schabloner om den tanketradition som historiskt är förutsättningen för ett öppet modernt och sekulärt samhälle.
Svante Nycander DN 9 september 2010
Marxismen betraktas av sina anhängare som en vetenskap, en särskild skola inom forskningen.
Det finns en objektiv verklighet som blir synlig först om man intar ”en bestämd, icke neutral, klassmässig position”, enligt Sven-Eric Liedman.
Många som inte längre bekänner sig till marxismen – genusteoretiker med flera – har behållit idén att den egna ideologin är en alternativ vetenskap, med förtjänster som saknas inom ”positivismen”,
en hållning som ofta förenas med stridbarhet och intolerans mot oliktänkande.
Svante Nycander, DN 2010-08-10
1938 in 2010
PAUL KRUGMAN, NYT September 5, 2010
TO: President Obama FROM: Thomas I. Palley
Plan B for Obama on the economy
FT, September 6, 2010
Top of page
Förnyad oro för europeiska banker
2010-09-09
Nice pic
Trade Deficit declines in July
CalculatedRisk on 9/09/2010
Top of page
U.S. Marines Recapture German-Owned Ship Attacked by Pirates
September 09, 2010
En form av ohelig allians, där problemtyngda stater garanterar problemtyngda banker,
som i sin tur köper statsskuld med finansiering från den europeiska centralbanken
minskar risken för misslyckade emissioner,
men frågan är hur långt det går att driva detta reptrick innan bubblan spricker.
Martin Enlund, senioranalytiker på Handelsbanken, DI 2010-09-09
Top of page
Joachim Fels, chief global economist at Morgan Stanley, said strains had reached a point where "one or several governments" may soon have to tap soon the rescue mechanism.
"Neither the European sovereign debt crisis nor the banking sector crisis has been resolved and both continue to mutually reinforce each other," he said, adding that the EU's stress tests for banks had failed to restore confidence.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 08 Sep 2010
Top of page
This early cycle weakness is often associated with fears of another recession.
During my own professional career, I can recall the US “growth scares” of 2002, 1992 and 1984.
Is the “growth scare” of 2010 different?
Sushil Wadhwani, FT September 8 2010
Top of page
The number of Americans who have been out of work for more than 6 months now stands at 6.5 million,
compared to peaks of only about 2 million in the previous two recessions.
Gavyn Davies, FT blog September 3, 2010
Top of page
SCB, reviderar upp det andra kvartalets BNP-tillväxt från tidigare 3,7
till urstarka 4,6 procent i årstakt.
DI 2010-09-08
Top of page
För andra valet i rad förlorar S på hus-skatten
Efter förra valet hävdade Göran Persson att Socialdemokraterna förlorade på grund av fastighetsskatten.
Jag tror han hade rätt. Nu vill de rödgröna ta revansch genom att höja fastighetskatten för småhus i lägen som de ogillar och sänka den för hyres- och bostadsrätter.
Det handlar om närmast kosmetiska förändringar, felräkningspengar i statsbudgeten.
INGA-LISA SANGREGORIO, Newsmill 2010-09-07
Happy Days are here again, så länge det varar
Den sakligt och moraliskt felaktiga, men valtaktiskt framgångsrika sänkningen av fastighetsskatten
Rolf Englund blog 2010-09-08
Top of page
Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, said austerity as a policy to end the global crisis was a "disaster",
adding that Europe was heading towards more economic difficulties if politicians meant what they say when they promised to cut back spending rather than just trying to calm down markets.
CNBC 8 Sep 2010
Top of page
Hans-Werner Sinn, head of Germany’s IFO Institute, said the US would have to purge its debt excesses the hard way.
“The bitter truth is that there is no way out of this with monetary and fiscal policy.
They will just have to see their living standards go down.”
Dr Roubini said the US growth rate was likely to fall below 1pc in the second half of the year
Niall Ferguson said the US has exhausted fiscal stimulus, The fiscal crisis seems to be out of control.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,05 Sep 2010
Top of page
Thilo Sarrazin
European countries cannot have it both ways on immigration
Which European politician said in July that his country was “suffering from 50 years of lax immigration rules that have led to a failure of integration”?
Tony Barber, FT September 3 2010
Top of page
The conservative counter-revolution
The Great Recession almost certainly marks its end
Martin Wolf's Exchange August 23, 2010
Bernanke’s recent Jackson Hole speech didn’t contain one reference to the key force driving the American economy right now:
private sector deleveraging
(here’s the previous year’s speech for comparison’s sake
By Steve Keen at John Mauldin 2010-09-06
Top of page
Statliga riksgälden har tjänat sex miljarder på att den svenska kronan stärkts sedan förra året.
Riksgälden passade nämligen på att ta på sig skulder i utländsk valuta,
något som blivit en god affär nu när kronan återigen har stärkts.
Ekot 7/9 2010
Top of page
Paul Krugman, Niall Ferguson
The vanity of economists needs to be challenged.
Above all, their claim to scientific rigour – buttressed by models and equations –
must be treated much more sceptically.
Gideon Rachman, FT September 6 2010
Top of page
Households and companies will continue to reduce debt built up before the financial crisis,
according to a report by the Bank for International Settlements.
Bloomberg 6/9 2010
Top of page
Trading, alltså en bank som för egen räkning köper och säljer värdepapper för att tjäna pengar
är en verksamhet som är helsnurrig av flera skäl
Andreas Cervenka, SvD/e24 2010-09-05
Top of page
While the Europeans are celebrating the end of the financial crisis, something strange is happening in the bond markets.
The gap in the yields – the spread – between the 10-year bonds of peripheral eurozone countries and Germany has been growing at an alarming rate.
It is now close to the level that prevailed in the days before the European Union decided to set up its bail-out fund in May.
Wolfgang Münchau, FT September 5 2010
Top of page
It is easy to vow that next time lenders’ losses will be pushed onto their creditors, not onto taxpayers.
But cast your mind back to late 2008. Anyone exposed to them tried to yank their cash out, causing a run that threatened another Great Depression.
Can anyone honestly say that they would let a big bank go down?
And yet, somehow, that choice is what the people redesigning the rules of finance must try to make possible.
The Economist Aug 26th 2010
Top of page
Central bankers are flying blind.
With short-term policy rates at or near zero,
getting more of a monetary boost means expanding a set of instruments whose efficacy, and side-effects, are ill-understood (see article).
The Economist Sep 2nd 2010
Top of page
Delta Force
GDP = C + I + G + Net Exports (that is, exports minus imports)
Savings = Investments
We believe that the recent stimulus in the US, as an example, did in fact have a temporary effect and kept the US out of what might have been a depression, but not without its own costs. That debt must be repaid.
John Mauldin 4/9 2010
Top of page
California produces about a quarter of America’s farm production with immigrants from south of the border doing the back-breaking work in the fields of the Salinas Valley, which was made famous by John Steinbeck.
But the most visible “crops” sprouting up these days are For Lease or foreclosure signs in the real estate market.
CNN September 2, 2010
Top of page
As the policy debate intensifies, investors might spare a thought for Korekiyo Takahashi,
Bank of Japan governor from 1911 to 1913.
Gillian Tett, FT September 2 2010
Top of page
Carnegie tar hem spelet om HQ.
Firman har därmed dribblat bort den senfärdiga och klumpiga Finansinspektionen
FI:s ordförande Bengt Westerberg är en systemrisk på finansmarknaden
Torbjörn Isacson, SvD/e24 2010-09-03
Top of page
Paradoxes Of Deleveraging And Releveraging
From 1929 to 1933, everyone was trying to pay down debt — and the debt/GDP ratio skyrocketed thanks to contraction and deflation.
During and immediately after WWII, there was massive borrowing — but GDP grew faster than debt, and the debt burden ended up falling.
Paul Krugman, New York Times, September 3, 2010
Top of page
"If the crisis has a single lesson, it is that the too-big-to-fail problem must be solved,"
Bernanke said Thursday while testifying before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission.
CNBC 2/9 2010
Bernanke also said it was impossible for the Fed to rescue Lehman Brothers from bankruptcy in 2008
because the Wall Street firm lacked sufficient collateral to secure a loan.
Lehman's former chief executive told the panel a day earlier that the firm could have been saved, but regulators refused to provide help.
CNBC 2/9 2010
U.S. regulators did not grant Lehman Brothers the same assistance as its competitors,
knocking out the possibility of an orderly unwind of the firm and aggravating the global crisis,
former Lehman Chief Executive Dick Fuld said
CNBC 1 September 2010
FI:s ordförande Bengt Westerberg uppges vara den som talat för mycket hård press på HQ
eftersom banken vållat FI problem under flera år
DI 2010-09-01
Top of page
The Fed Can Print More Money, But It Can’t Print Jobs
Larry Kudlow 10 Aug 2010
Top of page
Two results from Gallup, in March 1938:
Do you think government spending should be increased to help get business out of its present slump?
37% Yes - 63% No
In your opinion which will do more to get us out of the depression: increase government spending, or reduce taxes on business?
15% Increase government spending - 63% Reduce taxes on business - 21% No opinion
Paul Krungman 4 september 2010
Top of page
Suppose that the US presidential election of 1932 had, in fact, taken place in 1930, at an early stage in the Great Depression.
Suppose, too, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had won then, though not by the landslide of 1932. How different subsequent events might have been. The president might have watched helplessly as output and employment collapsed. The decades of Democratic dominance might not have happened.
On such chances the wheel of history turns.
Martin Wolf, FT, August 31 2010
Top of page
Almost two years into the bond flight, about $550 billion has poured into U.S. bond mutual funds
Using inflation-adjusted figures, investors had put $499 billion at this same stage of the Internet bubble.
Colas selected December 1996, the month of Alan Greenspan’s “irrational exuberance” speech, as the estimated start of the bubble in equities.
For bonds, he uses the collapse of Bear Stearns in March 2008.
CNBC 31 Aug 2010
Top of page
Problem bank list climbs to 829
its highest level since 1993 during the second quarter
CNN August 31, 2010
Rädsla och girighet blev HQ:s fall
en stor, etablerad revisionsfirma som KPMG medverkat
Björn Elmbrant, Dagens Arena 30 augusti, 2010
HQ:s revisor synas
Revisorsnämnden har beslutat att granska HQ:s revisor Johan Dyrefors.
Det är andra gången på kort tid som revisionsbyrån KPMG är inblandad i en tradingskandal.
SvD Näringsliv 31 augusti 2010
Top of page
However unclear monetary policy might be, the current state of thinking around fiscal policy was far worse.
Why Even Central Bankers Are Unsure What to Do Now
Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, tried to reclaim the Ricardian high ground
The late economist Hyman Minsky came more and more into the discussions
For monetary policy, the financial crisis has been the geologic equivalent of the faults that uplifted the Grand Tetons.
CNBC 30 Aug 2010
Bernanke, in his Aug. 27 speech in Jackson Hole, Wyoming
“Strong and stable” growth will “require appropriate and effective responses from economic policy makers across a wide spectrum”
“We all know that the main gorilla in the room is fiscal policy,” Jacob Frenkel, a former Bank of Israel governor who’s now chairman of JPMorgan Chase International
Bloomberg 30 August 2010
Top of page
Faber advises investors "stay away from Treasurys as they’ve been rallying since 1981
- equivalent to a 19-year bull run," - when the 10-year bottomed out on Sep. 21, 1981.
Faber says Dec. 18, 2008 was the peak of the bond bubble with yield of 2.08% and 2.53% on 10-year and 30-year respectively.
(See 10-year chart)
August 25, 2010
Top of page
The NBER committee in April issued a statement that it was too soon to declare an end to the recession that began in December 2007.
How the hell can the NBER put odds of a double-dip at 5% to 33% without having declared the end to the last recession?
Mish 28/8 2010
Top of page
One of the foreclosure cascade's not-so-hidden secrets is that the banks and investors who hold millions of busted mortgages are in no hurry to kick debtors out of their homes.
The average homeowner in foreclosure now is an amazing 461 days behind in his payments.
CNBC 28 Aug 2010
Top of page
- Vi ska vårda den ljusnande konjunkturen och föra Sverige tillbaka till överskott.
Annons från Alliansen 28/8 2010
- Krisen orsakades av en global finansiell krasch där giriga spekulanter tog orimliga risker, skriver Alliansen i sitt valmanifest 2010
Top of page
Jackson Hole – a disappointing speech and an interesting debate
Eurointelligence 30/8 2010
...
The Bernanke trap
Speech at the annual Federal Reserve retreat in Jackson Hole
to do whatever is necessary to keep the economy from stumbling down the Japanese path
CNN/Fortune, August 27, 2010, with good links
Top of page
GDP report: Sharp slowdown in economic growth
Revised sharply lower to an annual growth rate of 1.6%
The initial reading had been for a 2.4% growth rate in the period
CNN August 27, 2010
Top of page
The important question is whether growth is fast enough to bring down sky-high unemployment.
We need about 2.5 percent growth just to keep unemployment from rising,
and much faster growth to bring it significantly down.
Yet growth is currently running somewhere between 1 and 2 percent, with a good chance that it will slow even further in the months ahead.
If unemployment rises for the rest of this year, which seems likely, it won’t matter whether the G.D.P. numbers are slightly positive or slightly negative.
All of this is obvious. Yet policy makers are in denial.
Paul Krugman, New York Times, August 26, 2010
Top of page
USA-ekonomins Moment 22
Fastighetsmarknaden vänder inte uppåt förrän arbetsmarknaden förbättras.
Och arbetsmarknaden förbättras inte förrän fastighetsmarknaden vänder uppåt
Rolf Englund blog 2010-08-27
Top of page
Is the crisis coming back?
After the downgrading of Ireland by S&P, Irish sovereign bond spreads rose from 318bp to 344bp to level higher than before May, and even Greece spreads are now back at close to 10%, the level before the agreement on the EFSF. This means that the European rescue package have failed to calm down the market stress that triggered on those package in the first place.
There was further bad news from the US, where existing home sales declined by a record amount for July, giving rise to expectations of another decline in US house prices.
As ever, Calculated Risk has the best coverage of this.
The Wall Street Journal says in a comment that even a downturn to annualised growth rates of under 2% will feel like a recession.
In a 2% economy, there won’t be any job creation, or wage increases.
Eurointelligence 25/8 2010
Top of page
This graph shows existing home sales (left axis) and new home sales (right axis) through July.
This graph starts in 1994, but the relationship has been fairly steady back to the '60s.
Then along came the housing bubble and bust, and the "distressing gap" appeared
CalculatedRisk 25/8 2010
Top of page
Lånefesten vägrar ta slut
Utlåningen för bostadsändamål uppgick sammanlagt till 1,639 miljarder kronor i slutet av juli,
en ökning med 10,4 procent jämfört med samma månad föregående år
DI 2010-08-26
Top of page
Jag tycker det är skriande uppenbart att räntan världen över är för låg och att
en större del av stimulanserna borde ske via finanspolitiken.
Rolf Englund blog, 2009-12-05
Top of page
With the exception of temporary bubbles caused by reckless monetary policy, rising home prices are merely a symptom of a vibrant economy, not a cause.
The true cause of economic growth and higher living standards is rising productivity, which occurs when societies wisely invest in many things, such as new technologies and new ways of doing business.
Housing is just one of those things.
Setting as a goal the maintenance of high levels of investment in housing has obvious political appeal, but
it's junk economics for a nation that wants to innovate and grow.
Wall Street Journal 25/8 2010
Top of page
Swedbank kan inte för alltid enbart vara beroende av bostadsobligationsmarknaden, utan måste förr eller senare ge sig ut på den andra seniora obligationsmarknaden, menar Birgitta Forsberg, som skrivit den nyutgivna boken Fritt fall.
Det har dock klarats av med begränsad framgång hittills.
I februari i år gjorde banken det första försöket att ta upp lån i eget namn.
SvD Näringsliv 25/8 2010
Top of page
Is there a government bond bubble?
Probably not, but approach low-probability risks carefully
The Economist invitation August 2010
Top of page
New Home Sales Reach New Record Lows
Tim Iacono, August 25, 2010 with nice chart
Top of page
Existing Home Sales lowest since 1996
Months of supply increased to 12.5 months in July from 8.9 months in June.
A normal market has under 6 months of supply
CalculatedRisk, 24 August 2010
Top of page
Other things equal, demand is higher, the lower the real interest rate.
Do you really want to quarrel with that?
But right now, thanks to the aftermath of the financial crisis, even a zero nominal rate, which is a slightly negative real rate, isn’t low enough to produce full employment.
if you can’t raise employment by cutting interest rates, deficit spending — which doesn’t crowd out private spending when the interest rate doesn’t change — becomes a way to put unemployed resources to work
Paul Krugman New York Times August 23, 2010
Fed is running the risk of replaying the disaster movie that led to the credit crisis
by keeping monetary policy loose for too long
This is not the time for an aggressive Fed tightening, but...
Stephen Roach, CNBC 24 Aug 2010
Top of page
The European economy is at risk of sliding back into a recession as governments cut spending to reduce their budget deficits.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, Bloomberg 24/8 2010
Top of page
Yankee bonds
– dollar-denominated bonds sold by non-American companies into the US
So far this year, 773 have been issued, raising $412.9bn
– beating the $378.1bn raised up to this point last year
The attraction of the US market is lower funding costs.
Banks are the biggest issuers.
Eurointelligence 24/8 2010
Top of page
Interest rates near zero risk fanning asset bubbles or propping up inefficient companies, say Raghuram G. Rajan and William White, former head of the Bank for International Settlements’ monetary and economic department.
After Europe’s debt crisis recedes, Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke should start increasing his benchmark rate by as much as 2 percentage points so it’s no longer negative in real terms, Rajan says.
Bloomberg 23 August 2010
Top of page
Many real estate experts now believe that home ownership will never again yield rewards
like those enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century.
The wealth generated by housing in those decades, particularly on the coasts,
powered the economy, paying for the education of children and grandchildren,
keeping the cruise ships and golf courses full and the restaurants humming.
New York Times 23 August 2010
Top of page
Housing led the U.S. out of seven of the last eight recessions.
This time, it may kill the recovery.
Bloomberg Aug 23, 2010
Top of page
Member countries share a common currency, but when it comes to sovereign credit they are on their own.
This fact was obscured until recently by the willingness of the European Central Bank (ECB) to accept the sovereign debt of all member countries on equal terms at its discount window.
This allowed the member countries to borrow at practically the same interest rate as Germany,
and the banks were happy to earn a few extra pennies on supposedly risk-free assets by loading up their balance sheets with the government debt of the weaker countries.
These positions now endanger the creditworthiness of the European banking system.
"The Crisis & the Euro", George Soros, New York Review of Books, August 19, 2010
Top of page
I know it’s over the top, but here it is anyway:
the policy elite — central bankers, finance ministers, politicians who pose as defenders of fiscal virtue
are acting like the priests of some ancient cult,
demanding that we engage in human sacrifices to appease the anger of invisible gods.
Paul Krugman, New York Times 19/8 2010
Top of page
Varning! Bildt äter kräftor på Harpsund
Rolf Englund blog 2010-08-20
Det som händer nu är att marknaderna slutligen har upptäckt att pessimisterna hade rätt
"en tillväxt på bara en eller två procent, innebär ökad arbetslöshet och stora påfrestningar på samhället
Paul Krugman, Ekot 20/8 2010
Top of page
'Just a bad trend' - 500,000 jobless claims
"You can sometimes dismiss a big number and say , 'Oh, it's just one week,'" Quinlan added. "But with the four-week moving average continuing higher, you can see this is just a bad trend."
CNN August 19, 2010
Top of page
We've been living in a veritable bubble bath the past 10 years what with two stock bubbles, a real estate bubble and a derivatives bubble. And now, with so much money flooding into Treasury securities and interest rates so low,
many people are wondering whether the next pop! we'll hear will be the bursting of a bond bubble.
CNN Money Magazine: Ask the Expert, 19/8 2010
Top of page
Fastighetsskatten är en av de mest omdiskuterade skatterna.
Men det är naivt att tro att vi kan bli av med den.
Troligen är någon form av fastighetsbeskattning allt viktigare för statskassan.
Det handlar om stora belopp, det är tillgångar som inte kan flyttas utomlands och det är en skatt som inte påverkar tillväxten nämnvärt.
Vad än politiker säger så älskar de i hemlighet skatten på bostäder.
Annika Creutzer SvDe24 19/8 2010
Top of page
Nordic Economies Risk Housing Market Collapse
Swedish real estate may fall as the 20 percent of borrowers with the biggest debts struggle with burdens as much as 46 times their disposable incomes, says Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc.
Bloomberg Aug 19, 2010
Top of page
Knäckte fastighetsskatten Socialdemokraterna i valrörelsen 2006?
Det hävdade förre statsministern Göran Persson i sina memoarer.
Redan under Almedalsveckan för fyra år sedan ville Persson ställa ut ett löfte om frysta taxeringsvärden, i syfte att få bort fastighetsskatten från debatten. Men statsministern påstår att han inte orkade köra över sin finansminister Pär Nuder, som motsatte sig idén. Och sen gick det som det gick i valet.
DN-ledare 19/8 2010
Top of page
Fastighetsskatt är bra att ha
Sanningen är att inget parti med regeringsambitioner kan tänka bort fastighetsskatten då
den är en alldeles utmärkt skattebas. Den är förhållandevis stabil, flyttar inte och har i förhållande till andra skatter betydligt mindre oönskade samhällsekonomiska effekter.
Det betyder inte att Göran Perssons gamla fastighetsskatt var något att föredra. Konstruktionen saknade legitimitet...
Expressen-ledare 19/8 2010
Top of page
When, however, the economy suffers from Post Bubble Disorder,
characterised by private sector deleveraging and a fat-tail risk of deflation
In such a liquidity trap, private sector demand for credit is, axiomatically, very inelastic to low interest rates,
as evidenced by contracting private sector debt footings, even when the central bank’s policy rate is pinned against zero.
In such circumstances, the central bank has a profound duty to act unconventionally
Paul McCulley August 2010
Top of page
Aggregate consumer debt continued to decline in the second quarter,
continuing its trend of the previous six quarters.
As of June 30, 2010, total consumer indebtedness was $11.7 trillion,
a reduction of $812 billion (6.5%) from its peak level at the close of 2008Q3
Calculated Risk with nice chart 17/8 2010
Top of page
By 2006, /US house/ prices were starting to slide; they have since crashed almost to pre-bubble levels.
FT 16/8 2010
Familjen Brogren i Bromma är en av de stora vinnarna med regeringen Reinfeldt
Mer pengar i plånboken, lägre fastighetsskatt och lättare att renovera huset.
DN 6/8 2010 sidan 12 i pappersupplagen - men ej på nätet - här ett scannat utdrag i pdf-format
USA:s huspriser övervärderade med 14,0 procent
Svenska huspriser övervärderade med 34,7 procent
Economist print Decembet 30th 2009
The real interest rate on 5-year inflation-protected securities is now negative.
In other words, prospects for other investments are so poor that some investors prefer a safe asset that doesn’t quite keep up with inflation.
The invisible bond vigilantes continue their invisible attack: nominal 10-year bonds at 2.71%.
Paul Krugman 11 August 2010
Double-entry bookkeeping was a great invention.
It is a shame that so many macroeconomists and political pundits – and therefore, politicians themselves – seem to have forgotten it.
Paul McCulley July 2010
Top of page
There is neither the political will nor the public appetite for a new round of spending to create jobs.
A recent Time magazine poll found that only 24% of Americans favored a fresh stimulus program, as against 67% who opposed it.
Fortune 11 August 2010
U.S. Trade Deficit Unexpectedly Widens to $49.9 Billion as Exports Decline
- the highest level since October 2008
Bloomberg Aug 11, 2010
Armageddon Sells: Permabears Now Becoming Cool
Albert Edwards forecasts a “bloody, deep recession” that produces a stock market collapse of at least 60 percent,
followed by years of inflation of 20 percent to 30 percent
New York Times 10 Aug 2010
Could it really have arrived? Are global stocks about to tank in an all consuming way?
Indeed, is this the moment Albert Edwards has been waiting for since 1996?
Of course, Edwards is perhaps London’s best-known doom-monger when it comes to stocks.
FT Alphaville Monday, March 5th, 2007
The handling of the current financial crisis has reinforced too big to fail doctrine.
So how can one reduce moral hazard and reduce expectations of future bail-outs?
Living wills to curtail too-big-to-fail, perhaps even thereby allowing systemically important banks, such as Citigroup, Goldman Sachs or Barclays, to fail or, at least, to be unwound.
Charles Goodhart and Dirk Schoenmaker, FT August 9 2010
Top of page
Since the beginning of April, when optimism about the economic recovery was at its peak, 2-year bond yields have fallen by 0.63 per cent as the market has realised that the Fed would not tighten monetary policy until at least the end of 2011.
More remakarbly, the 5-year yield has dropped by 1.20 per cent, and the 10-year yield has tumbled 1.14 per cent, presumably reflecting a belief that abnormally low short rates will persist for many years to come.
The decline in bond yields has flown directly in the face of expectations that bond yields would rise because of fears about excessive government deficits, in a pattern which is disturbingly similar to what happened when Japan headed towards deflation a decade ago.
Gavyn Davies, FT 9 august 2010 with nice charts
Sven-Olof Johansson varnar för att hushållen är på väg in i en skuldfälla.
”Vill man vara lite konspiratorisk kan man säga att Sverige håller på att närma sig den situation som USA befann sig i 2007”, säger han.
”Risken är att vi får en baksmälla. I övriga världen ökar hushållen sitt sparande men här kör man på som om ingenting har hänt”.
Sven-Olof Johansson, DI 9/8 2010
IMF report
It isn’t only Spain where the current account deficits are going to persist.
Edward Hugh, A fistful och euros 7 august 2010
To meet even the conservative growth rates posited in the economics section, global energy
production would need to rise by 1.3% per year. By the 2030s, demand is estimated to be nearly 50%
greater than today. To meet that demand, even assuming more effective conservation measures, the
world would need to add roughly the equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s current energy production every
seven years.
U.S. Joint Forces Command’s Joint Operating Environment (JOE), February 2010
Siffrorna är osäkra, men i dag räknar man med att det finns uppemot 11–12 miljoner olagliga invandrare i USA.
Hur landet ska hantera detta problem har lett till en infekterad debatt som har fått omvärlden att fråga sig om USA håller på att närma sig den mer negativa europeiska synen på invandring.
Mest kontroversiellt är det lagförslag som antogs i Arizona under våren och som ger polisen befogenhet att undersöka om en misstänkt person är en olaglig immigrant.
DN-ledare 8/8 2010
"a loss of confidence – not merely in the idea that the future will be a brighter place, but also, most crucially, about whether anybody is able to predict that future at all."
So what on earth is going on? Optimists like to blame it on a summer lull, or temporary jitters about US unemployment or the eurozone. They may be right. But personally, I suspect that there is something more fundamental going on too.
Gillian Tett, FT August 5 2010
As the third anniversary of the credit crunch approaches, I have been doing some reflecting on where I went wrong as an economist.
As the greenest student of economics will tell you, there are counter-examples to the principle that markets work and the financial system of the past five years has made a compelling case to be added to the list.
Tim Harford, FT August 3 2010
Basel
What happened in 2008, the collapse and rescue of the worldwide banking system, touched all of us: it turned a gentle recession into the worst recession since the 1930s; and we'll be living with the consequences, in the form of lower growth and squeezed living standards, for years.
Now imagine that the equivalent disaster had occurred in the airline industry, that almost every aeroplane came within a few seconds of dropping out of the skies.
In the aftermath, and however complex the engineering of a plane may be and irrespective of the intricacies of traffic control, the effort to mend and reform air transport would be conducted in full public gaze, using ideas and phrases understandable to all.
As citizens, we wouldn't tolerate anything else - and nor would politicians and regulators believe for an instant that they could get away with stitching up some ostensible solution in private.
So what is it about banking regulation that makes it inappropriate for discussion in front of the children?
Robert Preston, the BBC's business editor, 2 August 2010
Currency traders said expectations of looser US monetary policy raised the prospect of
a return of the so-called dollar “carry trade”, in which investors take advantage of low US interest rates to invest in higher-yielding currencies.
FT August 3, 2010
If you want to worry about something, I can recommend the US current account deficit.
A modest depreciation in the US dollar would only be enough to stimulate a J-curve making imports more expensive and having little effect on the deficit.
The magnitude of the adjustment is likely to be far more disruptive than what little overall price instability seems to be in store.
Richard Robb, Economists' Forum, FT August 2, 2010
Lawrence Summers, chief economic adviser to President Barack Obama, described the world’s leading economies as “in or near liquidity trap conditions”
With the shock of 2008 fading into memory, the moment of reckoning for the global economy has arrived.
Will the bounce back from the nadir become established as a return to sustainable expansion – or will initial relief mutate into the despair of a renewed slowdown?
Chris Giles, FT July 27 2010
Future generations will curse us for cutting in a slump
In 1937 Keynes wrote: “The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury.” Jean-Claude Trichet disagrees.
Robert Skidelsky and Michael Kennedy, FT July 27 2010
Claremont Review of Books Spring 2010
Bubbles, Bubbles, Toils and Troubles
Robert J. Samuelson in the Spring 2010 issue of the Claremont Review
Hushållens lån dubbelt så mycket som statsskulden
Rolf Englund blog 2010-07-27
Finansinstitutens utlåning till hushållen ökade med 8,9 procent i juni
Hushållens samlade lån uppgick vid utgången av juni till 2.428 miljarder kronor,
varav den största delen, 1.625 miljarder kronor, bestod av lån kopplade till bostaden.
Riksgälden: Den svenska statsskulden var 1 115 miljarder kronor den 30 juni 2010.
DI 2010-07-27
Basel
Sheila Bair, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, has said some members of the committee setting international capital standards are “succumbing” to “disingenuous” lobbying from large banks. In an interview with the Financial Times, Ms Bair also said she would not hesitate to use newly acquired powers to break up an institution if it could not provide a credible “living will”
describing how it could be wound up in the event of failure.
FT July 20 2010
Basel
Global banking regulators have reached a breakthrough agreement to tighten capital requirements and impose new worldwide liquidity and leverage standards,
but softened some of their proposals and delayed others to at least 2018.
FT July 26 2010
Davidson, Galbraith, and Skidelsky declined to sign due to a difference of opinion on deficits. Their position is outlined below
Our reservations centered on one sentence, namely, "We recognize the necessity of a program to cut the mid-and long-term federal deficit.. "
Since we do not agree with this statement, we could not sign the letter.
Huffington Post 26/7 2010
Away from traditional portfolio theory and more toward "Black Swan" mentalities espoused by author Nassim Taleb.
Pimco bond fund mangers have coined "New Normal" as their outlook for the next several years Pimco's Richard H. Clarida about fatter tails, that less probable events
CNBC 26 July 2010
Is America facing an increase in structural unemployment?
When an economy experiences a severe recession associated with a sharp decline in aggregate demand, we should not begin by asking whether structural unemployment is the problem.
Instead, we should first try to see how much of the unemployment can be explained by nominal shocks.
Structural unemployment is a sort of residual; it represents those long-term unemployed that would be without jobs even if aggregate demand was on target.
Scott Sumner The Economist July 25th 2010
When the private sector is deleveraging even with zero interest rates, the economy enters a deflationary spiral as it loses aggregate demand equal to the sum of unborrowed savings and debt-repayments every year.
If left unattended, the economy will continue to contract until either private sector balance sheets are repaired, or the private sector has become too poor to save any money (=depression).
The last time this deflationary spiral was allowed to materialise was during the Great Depression in the US.
Richard Koo, Chief economist, Nomura Research Institute, The Economist Jul 26th 2010
To understand modern Republican thinking on fiscal policy, we need to go back to perhaps the most politically brilliant (albeit economically unconvincing) idea in the history of fiscal policy: “supply-side economics”.
Martin Wolf July 25, 2010
The Death of Paper Money
As they prepare for holiday reading in Tuscany, City bankers are buying up rare copies of an obscure book on the mechanics of Weimar inflation published in 1974.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 25 Jul 2010
Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, Agricultural Bank of Greece SA and five Spanish savings banks didn’t have adequate reserves to maintain a Tier 1 capital ratio of at least 6 percent in the event of a recession and sovereign-debt crisis
Had the Tier 1 threshold been 7 percent, 24 of the banks would have failed,
said Andrew Sheets, Morgan Stanley’s head of European credit strategy in London
Bloomberg July 25, 2010
Certainly, the stress tests should be based on what one might call a plausible worst-case scenario, not one that represents the absolute worst. Nobody is asking the bank supervisors to stress-test the impact of an alien attack.
But sovereign default in the case of Greece is not such a far-fetched scenario – even if you believe it to be unlikely. It is irresponsible for the stress testers to ignore that sort of event.
That is like a car crash tester failing to consider the possibility of an oncoming vehicle.
Wolfgang Münchau FT July 25 2010
Economics is not hard - Part I: Don’t let professional economists tell you otherwise
Why did economics bloggers appear in the years after the collapse of the tech bubble in the early 2000s and flourish during the rise of the housing bubble starting in 2002?
Answer: to fill the vacuum created by the professional economics community that repeatedly failed to protect consumers from the ravages of not one but two asset bubbles in ten years that resulted in the greatest wealth transfer in world history and the near dismantling of the remnants of the world’s once most productive economy.
Itulip 13/7 2010
Part 5B. What Happens If Things Go Really Badly?
More Things Can Go Badly:
Credit Default Swaps, Interest Swaps and Options, Foreign Exchange
at CalculatedRisk on 7/24/2010
In fact, banks have virtually ceased to function as financial intermediaries since 2008, preferring to use the zero cost of money provided by the Fed to finance purchases of Treasury securities instead of supplying loans to households and small businesses.
John H. Makin, American Enterprise Institute, July 2010
The initial response to the crisis (sharp cuts in interest rates, bank bailouts, stimulus spending) probably averted a depression.
But the crisis has also battered the logic of all major theories: Keynesianism, monetarism and "rational expectations."
Robert J. Samuelson, June 28, 2010
A few links about the state of Economics as a science
Click here
Helping the long-term jobless in a prolonged recession is generally a bipartisan issue,
but this time, Republicans argued that the measure will add too much to the national debt.
Heidi Shierholz, Washington Post, July 25, 2010
Only seven of 91 banks failed the tests
Five of the seven were cajas, Spanish savings banks
The Bank of Spain on Friday indicated that it had sufficient contingent liquidity measures in place to reassure caja customers and counter any threat of a run on these banks.
FT July 23 2010 17:46
In fact, banks have virtually ceased to function as financial intermediaries since 2008, preferring to use the zero cost of money provided by the Fed to finance purchases of Treasury securities instead of supplying loans to households and small businesses.
John H. Makin, American Enterprise Institute, July 2010
Ingen fara säger Bank of Spain
Rolf Englund blog 2010-07-24
What lessons does history have to teach us about Jean-Claude Trichet’s call for immediate, rapid, and substantial fiscal and monetary retrenchment and austerity
- his full-throated endorsement of the agenda of the Pain Caucus?
Brad DeLong, FT July 23 2010
There is nothing particularly new about the most recent financial crisis
We refer to them as being "white swan events"
to compare them with the idea of a black swan event that has been popularized by my friend Nassim Taleb.
Nouriel Roubini, Motley Fool May 14, 2010
Back in 2008 the US government effectively nationalised Fannie and Freddie
under the fig leaf of a “conservatorship” scheme.
$145bn of taxpayers’ money to prop them up, more than was spent on direct injections into the US banks or car sector.
Gillian Tett, FT July 22 2010
The three dominant credit-ratings providers in the US have requested their clients not to use their credit ratings
This is the direct consequence of a new /german/ law that will make ratings firms liable for the quality of their ratings decisions, effective immediately.
“That means new bond sales in the $1.4 trillion market for mortgages, autos, student loans and credit cards could effectively shut down.”
Eurointelligence 23/7 2010
The scandal of economic theory
competing schools of macro policy.
Underbelly July 22, 2010
Robert Solow: Building a Science of Economics for the Real World
http://democrats.science.house.gov/Media/file/Commdocs/hearings/2010/Oversight/20july/Solow_Testimony.pdf
Unfortunately, the front-loaded deficit reductions may push economically weak countries into recession for the next year or two. That is the cost of achieving the needed long-term deficit reduction in the current economic and political environment.
However, government officials are not warning the public that this is the choice that they have made.
Instead they are claiming that the front-loaded fiscal deficit reductions will not weaken the economy
Martin Feldstein, FT July 22 2010
Our economies are emerging from the worst economic crisis since the second world war, and without the swift and appropriate action of central banks and a very significant contribution from fiscal policies, we would have experienced a major depression.
Now is the time to restore fiscal sustainability.
But the timing remains disputed.
Jean-Claude Trichet, FT July 22 2010
In extraordinary times, the economy may be close to non-linear phenomena such as a rapid deterioration of confidence among broad constituencies of households, enterprises, savers and investors.
My understanding is that an overwhelming majority of industrial countries are now in those uncharted waters, where confidence is potentially at stake
Jean-Claude Trichet, FT July 22 2010
The British government has just stopped the sale of index-linked national savings certificates. These paid the rate of inflation plus 1% for five years, with returns being tax-free.
Buttonwood, The Economist July 20th 2010
"What’s causing all the trouble is a `carry trade’ unwind by real estate companies and people in Eastern Europe who borrowed in francs to buy houses.
They are in effect being bailed out at the cost of the Swiss taxpayer."
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 21 July 2010
Top of page
The world economy is entering a new phase after the failure of fiscal stimulus to create a sustained recovery in either the US or Europe.
Consumers will not provide the engine of recovery, nor should they after overspending for a decade.
Jeffrey Sachs FT July 21 2010
Krugman versus Ferguson: Round Two
Not since Ken Rogoff’s famous attack on Joe Stiglitz has the dismal science of economics provoked such pompous, self-important, personalised squabbling.
The reality is that nobody knows what cutting the deficit into a weak economic recovery is going to do to output and jobs
Jeremy Warner, The Daily Telegraph, 20 July 2010
In an unusually personal and public rebuke, the International Monetary Fund's top economist accused Nobel-winning economist Joe Stiglitz of slander, self-aggrandisement and intellectual vanity.
Mail Guardian Online 1 January 2002
The stress tests may ultimately lead to catastrophic real-life stresses on banks vital to the prosperity of Europe.
Robert Preston, the BBC's business editor, 21 July 2010
I morgon släpps resultaten av de stresstest som ska avslöja hälsoläget hos Europas 91 största banker. Värst vore om alla klarade provet galant.
Ett väl godkänt betyg skulle sänka förtroendet helt för ett test som redan mötts av skepsis och ifrågasättanden. Nästa fråga skulle då bli: vad är det myndigheterna försöker dölja? Ungefär så paranoid är finansmarknaden.
Andreas Cervenka SvD Näringsliv 22/7 2010
Domedagen II
“If HRE is the only German bank that fails, that completely discredits the tests – not just for Germany but for the whole of Europe”.
Rolf Englund blog 2010-07-21
Top of page
The discussion of fiscal stimulus this past year and a half has filled me with despair over the state of the economics profession.
Paul Krugman July 18, 2010
The academic evidence on Keynesian growth effects of fiscal deficits is thoroughly inconclusive.
Kenneth Rogoff, July 20 2010
My new maxim, never to stand in the middle of a fight between Paul Krugman and Niall Ferguson
It says a lot about the talents of John Maynard Keynes – and just as much about the shortcomings of modern macroeconomics – that when the financial crisis struck, policymakers instinctively reached not for their fancy models, but for the Keynesian idea of fiscal stimulus
Tim Harford, FT July 20 2010
Highly recommended
Domedagen blir på fredag
Då lägger EU fram resultaten, utvalda resultat, av de stresstester de har utsatt de europeiska bankerna för.
Anatole Kaletsky i The Times "undemocratic survival plan for the euro"
Rolf Englund blog 2010-07-20
Today’s Keynesians have learnt nothing
Niall Ferguson, FT July 19 2010
It is far too soon to end expansion
Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy need to be austere.
But Germany, Britain, America and Japan do not.
Brad DeLong, FT July 19 2010
Hungary's IMF revolt augurs ill for Greece
"Austerity is extremely hard to sell to electorates.
The risk is that this moves from a wider financial and economic crisis to a European political crisis as governments are punished by voters.
The approval rating for Lithuanian's prime minister has fallen to 7pc."
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 19 July 2010
Top of page
Savings products linked to the inflation rate have been withdrawn from the market by National Savings and Investments after proving too popular.
BBC 19 July 2010
Det största problemet:
har risken för att exempelvis Grekland ställer in betalningarna verkligen lagts in i testerna på ett ärligt sätt?
Enligt Financial Times har marknaderna tagit höjd för förluster på 60 procent på grekiska statsobligationer – medan regleringsorganen har sagt åt bankerna att räkna med 17 procent.
DN-ledare, signerad Gunnar Jonsson, 20 juli 2010
Will taxpayers will have to bail out their banks, when we have the results on 23 July of stress tests?
Only a few weeks ago there was an initial billion dollar bailout of European banks.
You may have missed it, because it wasn't called a bank rescue programme.
BBC's business editor Robert Peston, 16 July 2010
timiacono.com/
housing-market-index-hits-17-month-low/
If you want to be really, really pessimistic...
...then Calculated Risk is the place to this morning.
What Happens If Things Go Really Badly? $15 Trillion of Sovereign Debt in Default
CalculatedRisk on 7/18/2010
The great austerity debate
Over the next week some of the world’s leading policymakers and economists will be addressing in the FT the all-consuming contemporary economic debate: austerity versus stimulus. The writers, including Larry Summers, Jean-Claude Trichet and the FT’s Martin Wolf will argue whether cutting now risks suffocating the fragile recovery of the global economy.
FT July 18 2010
"Åtstramning för expansion"
I sydeuropeiska länder kan finanspolitiken fungera på ett omvänt sätt.
Stora underskott och viss risk för statsbankrutt kan behöva motverkas med drastiska nedskärningar.
Men detta borde inte gälla mer välskötta länder trots deras underskott.
Danne Nordling 17/7 2010
Top of page
Alan Greenspan the 2001 Bush tax cuts
"They should follow the law and let them lapse," Greenspan said.
The government needs the revenue
July 16, 2010
The Debt Supercycle
I have been writing about The End Game for some time now.
And writing a book of the same title.
John Mauldin 17/7 2010
The Fed minutes warned of "significant downside risks" and a possible slide into deflation, an admission that zero interest rates, $1.75 trillion of QE, and a fiscal deficit above 10pc of GDP have so far failed to lift the economy out of a structural slump.
"The Committee would need to consider whether further policy stimulus might become appropriate if the outlook were to worsen appreciably," it said. The economy might not regain its "longer-run path" until 2016.
"The Fed is throwing in the towel," said Gabriel Stein, of Lombard Street Research. "They are preparing to start QE again. This was predictable because the M3 broad money supply has been contracting for months."
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 15 July 2010
Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, was asked the obvious question:
if deficits are so worrisome, what about the budgetary cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, which the Obama administration wants to let expire but Republicans want to make permanent? What should replace $650 billion or more in lost revenue over the next decade?
His answer was breathtaking:
Paul Krugman, New York Times July 15, 2010
One fascinating idea now provoking a chorus of behind-the-scenes debate among regulators and central banks
to force creditors – not taxpayers – to swallow losses if disaster strikes
Gillian Tett, FT July 15 2010
Man får inte glömma bort att vi har en fortsatt stark konjunkturuppgång, vilket borgar för en stabil prisutveckling på bostadsmarknaden.
Det blir nog inga dramatiska prisförändringar i höst
Peeter Pütsep, vd för Svensk Fastighetsförmedling, DN 2010-07-14
Top of page
Conundrum
After numerous boom-bust cycles driven by domestic safe asset shortages,
emerging markets learned to export rational bubbles to economies with a comparative advantage in generating safe assets.
Mike Story (hm), FT July 14 2010
Highly recommended
Bankvärlden håller andan.
Idag och imorgon möts Baselkommittén för att besluta om nya regler för bankerna som mest sannolikt kommer att leda till högre räntor för hushåll och företag.
Annelie östlund E24 2010-07-14
There are two schools of thought on how to respond.
On the one hand, we have the new and unexpected coalition of monetarists and Keynesians.
On the other, there is the Austrian school
Jamil Baz, FT July 13 2010
As Raghuram Rajan of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund notes in a thought-provoking new book, the underlying “fault lines” are still with us.
Martin Wolf July 13 2010
Highly recommended
ONE of the failures leading up to the crisis was the inability of regulators to understand the scale of the shadow banking system or its interconnectedness with the overall financial system.
July 13th 2010, by S.C. The Economist Economics Free exchange
"The U.S. trade deficit widened unexpectedly"
CNBC 13 July 2010
“Everyone wants to think they’re smarter than the poor souls in developing countries, and smarter than their predecessors,” says Carmen M. Reinhart
Ms. Reinhart and her collaborator from Harvard, Kenneth S. Rogoff, have spent years investigating wreckage scattered across documents from nearly a millennium of economic crises and collapses.
New York Times July 2, 2010
So what is the material difference between the optimists and the pessimists?
The optimists divide into two groups. There are those who have difficulties counting to zero,
who cannot add up the global private, public, and foreign balances, which must equal zero by definition.
Wolfgang Münchau, FT July 11 2010
Samma fråga som om svenska bilköpare kan ställas om banker och stater, hur skulle det gå om alla slutade leva över sina tillgångar?
Den berättelsen skulle man gärna vilja höra, hur det skulle kunna gå till att demontera de globala skuldbergen, om det är möjligt att sluta köpa saker vi inte behöver, för pengar vi inte har.
Marie-Louise Samuelsson, Sydsvenskan 11 juli 2010
Morgan Stanley’s former Asia chief Stephen Roach:
“Alan Greenspan kept the policy rate too low for too long, set us up for credit and property bubbles that led to an enormous crisis, [and] I think Ben Bernanke is just rerunning the Greenspan movie of seven or eight years ago.”
You’ll read much the same thing from Roach on this very first TMTGM post from about five-and-a-half years ago
July 9, 2010, by Tim Iacono
Keynes Versus Hayek, 1932
It’s deeply tragic that we’re having to have this debate all over again,
as the world economy slides into deflation and stagnation
Paul Krugman July 9, 2010
Whether it is their residence, a second home or a house bought as an investment,
the rich have stopped paying the mortgage at a rate that greatly exceeds the rest of the population.
CNBC 9 July 2010
In 1984, I bought my London house. I estimate that the land on which it sits was worth £100,000 in today’s prices. Today, the value is perhaps ten times as great.
The people of the US, UK, Spain and Ireland became feverish speculators in land.
Today, the toxic waste poisons the entire world economy.
Martin Wolf, FT July 8 2010
Martin Wolf om fastighetsskatten
Rolf Englund blog 9/7 2010
Morgan Johansson nämner inte fastighetsskatten i sin artikel om att
Reinfeldt ligger till höger om Lundgren
Newsmill 2010-07-08
The creation of the euro resulted in the disappearance of intra-area exchange rate risk and an expectation of fiscal and macroeconomic convergence among the euro member countries.
This was reflected in a significant narrowing of regional sovereign spreads until very recently.
On the heels of Greece’s fiscal troubles, investors are now re-pricing these risks across the region.
This highlights the need for policymakers to continue to pursue credible fiscal consolidation plans and strengthen economic governance in the euro area.
IMF Global Financial Stability Report, July 7, 2010
US 10-year Treasury note yield below 3 percent
2010-07-07
Read more here
Italy could fall into a so-called 'debt trap.'
We think that it might take a decade or more of stagnant or falling wages to restore full competitiveness
Roger Bootle and his team over at Capital Economics
CNBC 6 Jul 2010
Oil price graph July 2010
Calculated risk
Samtidigt som det svenska skattetrycket går ned kraftigt och börjar närma sig EU-snittet, har Borg etablerat de borgerliga som mer trovärdiga i ekonomiska frågor än de rödgröna.
Borg har vittring på något stort. Han får se upp så att framgången inte stiger honom åt huvudet.
Peter Wolodarski, DN 2010-07-05
Kevin Daly som är makroekonom på finansjätten Goldman Sachs, och som nu besöker Almedalen, håller med om att den svenska ekonomin ser stark ut.
Och han tillägger att den svenska regeringen gått och väl skulle kunna lätta på finanskranarna för att stimulera ekonomin ytterligare
Ekot 5 juli 2010
They (G-20) may hope that retrenchment now will spur on private spending.
But what is their plan if it turns out that it does not?
Martin Wolf, July 6 2010
My conclusion, then, is that the advanced countries remain highly short of demand.
In this environment, rapid cuts in fiscal support make sense if, and only if, monetary policy can be effective on its own and expanding the interest-elastic parts of the economy is the best way to climb out of the hole. There is reason to doubt both ideas.
Martin Wolf, July 6 2010
On Monday, the yield on 10-year government bonds was 1.1 per cent in Japan, 2.6 per cent in Germany, 3 per cent in the US and 3.3 per cent in the UK.
Based on yields on index-linked securities, real interest rates on borrowing by these governments are very low (1.2 per cent, or less, in the US, Germany and UK).
Investors are saying that they view the risk of depression and deflation as greater than that of default and inflation.
Martin Wolf, July 6 2010
Is monetary policy too expansionary or not expansionary enough?
Martin Wolf blog June 27, 2010
Why it is right for central banks to keep printing
Martin Wolf, FT June 22 2010
The number of unemployed Americans fell by 350,000 - and the unemployment rate fell to 9.5 per cent.
But consider that this was mainly due to a reduction in the civilian labour force of 652,000 workers.
FT blog Moneysupply July 2, 2010
If the economy were a coal mine, the job market would be an 800-pound canary,
warning of a recovery that is running out of oxygen. Congress has failed to provide even the most basic support — extended unemployment benefits and bolstered aid to states.
New York Times editorial 2nd July 2010
There is undeniably a risk that tightening policy too early will cause the economy to dip back into recession. But ...
In the view of The Times, the balance of risks suggests that policymakers should begin to withdraw the stimulus.
The Times editorial, July 2 2010
Goodbye Keynes, hello Hoover
To Keynesian critics the switch to austerity is a colossal blunder.
Supporters of the shift to austerity believe by boosting firms’ and households’ confidence and lowering the risk premium on government debt, well-designed fiscal consolidation can actually boost growth.
RE: Ha, ha, ha
The Economist print July 1st 2010
Top of page
Markus Uvell ny vd för Timbro
Markus Uvell har utsetts till ny vd för Stiftelsen Fritt Näringsliv/Timbro.
Markus kommer närmast från Svenskt Näringsliv där han i dag är opinionsanalyschef och t f kommunikationschef. Dessförinnan har han en bakgrund som bl a vd i Demoskop, vd och grundare av United Minds och senior partner på Kreab.
Full text
Peje/Kreab
Wolfgang Munchau on the BIS annual report
ultra-low nominal interest rates play a significant role during the built-up of bubbles – a role that may not yet be sufficiently understood
Eurointelligence 30 June 2010
Alla kan inte exportera sig ur krisen, för då är det ingen som köper.
Grekland och Spanien måste skära ned drastiskt, inget annat kan återställa finansmarknadernas förtroende.
Tyskland ska ha ordning på statsfinanserna, men ....
DN-ledare 29 juni 2010
Gabriel Stein: The BIS ought to know better"
The Bank for International Settlements has warned authorities across the developed world that they cannot rely on ultra-low interest rates to cushion the blow of austerity measures.
The Swiss-based "bank for central bankers" said ultra-low rates and massive fiscal stimulus saved the world from an economic meltdown during the credit crisis, but the balance of advantage has since shifted.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 28 June 2010
Hushållens lånefest fortsätter
DI 2010-06-28 09:34
De monetära finansinstitutens utlåning till hushållen ökade med 9,1 procent i maj jämfört med samma månad föregående år. Föregående månad var ökningstakten 9,2 procent.
Det visar Riksbankens finansmarknadsstatistik, som publiceras av SCB.
...
Jag tycker det är skriande uppenbart att räntan världen över är för låg och att en större del av stimulanserna borde ske via finanspolitiken.
Rolf Englund blog 2009-12-05
Världsekonomin är nära en ny depression, och om en sådan utveckling blir verklighet beror det främst på en misslyckad politik.
Paul Krugman i New York Times med anledning av helgens G20-möte i Toronto.
DI 2010-06-28
The Third Depression
You might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery.
But no: over the last few months there has been a stunning resurgence of hard-money and balanced-budget orthodoxy
Paul Krugman, New York Times June 27, 2010
---
Only a closer union can save the eurozone
I am aware that, at a time of rising nationalism and regionalism throughout the EU, there is no consensus for such sweeping reforms
Wolfgang Münchau, FT, June 27 2010 19:52
Regeringar klarar att stimulera i dåliga tider, men att strama åt i goda är långt svårare. Det är svårt att i en opinionskänslig och ganska upplyst demokrati bedriva konjunkturpolitik. Och den internationella finansmarknaden slår tillbaka med räntehöjningar när stater börjar låna för mycket.
När stater stimulerar står det en hord av bankekonomer i TV-rutan och talar om att det kommer surt efter – och då väljer många att spara. Därför fungerar Keynes recept dåligt idag.
OLLE WäSTBERGS NYHETSBREV 17 JUNI 2010
GDP = C + I + G + (X-M)
John Mauldin 18 June 2010
The age of easy credit and its aftermath
Is there life after debt?
The Economist print, Jun 24th, 2010
Krugman: "That '30s Feeling" In the NY Times
Suddenly, creating jobs is out, inflicting pain is in. Condemning deficits and refusing to help a still-struggling economy has become the new fashion everywhere ...
CalculatedRisk 6/17/2010
Den kritiska frågan är:
Hur ska man få ned den totala skuldsättningen i världsekonomin utan att förvärra krisen ännu mer?
Det oroande svaret på denna fråga om åtstramningar är nog att det inte finns några framträdande ekonomer som kan ge besked.
Danne Nordling blog 11 juni 2010
Are these hardships necessary?
The trick of the British establishment is to turn discussion from “whether to” into “how to” questions. The media debate is on which government services to cut or on the balance between spending cuts and tax increases. Once the discussion has been channelled into these trenches the establishment has won.
The real argument, however, should be on whether we need unparalleled fiscal austerity or not.
Samuel Brittan, FT June 17 2010
The parallel with what happened in 1931 is irresistible.
The current stampede to thrift shows that the re-conversion to Keynes in the wake of the financial collapse of 2008 was only skin-deep
We are about to embark on a momentous experiment to discover which of the two stories about the economy is true
Robert Skidelsky, FT June 16 2010
Highly recommended
Top of page
New home construction tumbled in May following the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit in April,
a development that surprised many forecasters for some reason.
Nice chart at Tim Iacono
But bank profits are up tremendously; so where are all these increased profits coming from?
Not to worry! By borrowing trillions of dollars from the FED at ¼% and lending the money right back to the Government by buying FHA bonds paying 4%, that require no reserves be kept, so naturally they show big increases in profits
Aubie Baltin, June 2010
By the way, what ever happened to all those Toxic Assets that were on the banks' books?
Oh, they no longer count since they do not have to mark to market anymore
Aubie Baltin, June 2010
Economists propose one obvious solution: bank boards and regulators should also link executive pay to the performance of bank debt, measured either by bond prices or the cost of insuring bank bonds against default using credit default swaps.
That, they argue, would provide both a capitalist incentive and one to keep banks stable – and, better still, without Big Government control.
Gillian Tett, FT June 15 2010
While it's certainly too early for historical perspective on the stunning events of 2007-2009, I venture to guess that, when the history of the period is written, it will read something like this:
For a host of reasons the U.S. economy was struck by a calamitous financial crisis followed by a vicious recession.
The government—including two administrations, Congress, and the Fed—marshaled enormous resources to save the financial system and to fight the recession.
It worked.
Alan S. Blinder, WSJ 16 June 2010
The world’s biggest excess savers, Germany, Japan and China, are not going to stimulate domestic demand in a way that would allow the G20 to announce an agreed strategy for global rebalancing. Real default, in the form of debt restructuring, seems likely in parts of southern Europe.
Inflation is a plausible outcome for the US in the long run.
John Plender, FT 15 June 2010
Premature retrenchment threatens recession and even deflation, as I argued last week.
Having barely survived the biggest financial meltdown in history, we need to appreciate that these downside risks are serious.
Cutting public spending will not automatically raise private spending.
Martin Wolf June 15 2010
A consensus is forming that policymakers should tighten fiscal policyWhat if they find that it tips economies into recession, or even deflation?
Martin Wolf, 8 June 2010
A blogger who left Britain 20 years ago for rural bliss in Spain has become an unlikely economic sage whose advice has been sought by the International Monetary Fund.
Edward Hugh counts Nobel Prize winner and American economist Paul Krugman among his avid followers.
CNN June 10, 2010
The eurozone’s tragic small-country mindset
One of the most important characteristics of a small open economy is that its own actions have little impact on the rest of the world.
Wolfgang Münchau, FT 13 June 2010
This is a rare one newspaper-only scoop.
Frankfurter Allgemeine reports this morning that EU officials will start talks about a bail out for Spain, citing unnamed sourced in Berlin. The paper said the situation had deteriorated so much that they did not want wait until the EU summit on Thursday.
The trigger is the freeze in the inter-banking market last week as the markets have lost confidence in the Spanish banking sector.
Eurointelligence 14 June 2010
In a sea of academic economic literature, there are a handful of essays that provide lifelong analytical anchors.
Some Unpleasant Keynesian-Minsky Logic
Paul McCulley June 2010
So far, so good. But here is my question: what is your “plan B”?
I have been fascinated – if appalled – by the pre-Keynesian approach you and the prime minister have taken to the UK’s fiscal challenges.
What Keynes called “the Treasury view” – that fiscal policy has no effect on activity, even in a deep recession – is alive and well in Downing Street.
Martin Wolf, 10 June 10 2010
The economic situation today is drastically worse than a couple years ago,
and the euro is doomed as a concept,
Nassim Taleb, professor and author of the bestselling book "The Black Swan,"
CNBC 10 June 2010
Tyskland, G20, Grekland EU/SPV
Rolf Englund blog 2010-06-08
Den ekonomiska vetenskapen har inte kunnat komma fram till en teori som beskriver hur den finansiella ekonomin hänger ihop med den reala.
Nästa steg är att denna (hypotetiska) teori måste få sådant genomslag att aktörer och kommentatorer agerar utifrån denna institutionella ram.
Först därefter kan man med större säkerhet uttala sig om vilka olika konsekvenser störningar och stabiliseringsåtgärder sannolikt kommer att ha.
Danne Nordling blog 5 juni 2010
Madmen in Authority
Rereading my post on the folly of the G20, it seems to me that I didn’t fully convey just how crazy the demand for fiscal austerity really is.
Here’s the IMF’s estimate of sources of the growth in debt over the next few years
Paul Krugman 7 June 2010
Tyskland ska spara 771 miljarder
DI 2010-06-07
German Government Agrees on Historic Austerity Program
Right or wrong – whether this plunges the whole world into a deflationary abyss from which there is no escape or if, somehow, this has the desired effect of restoring financial stability over time
– it’s nice to see that there are at least a few elected officials in the world who question the idea of simply piling on more debt to cure the world’s economic ills.
Tim Iacono 7 Jun 2010
Lost Decade, Here We Come
The deficit hawks have taken over the G20
Paul Krugman June 6, 2010
Time to plan for post-Keynesian era
Mainstream Keynesian economics is facing its last hurrah. The global fiscal stimulus championed last year by the Obama administration is coming undone, repudiated by the same Group of 20 that endorsed it last year.
Jeffrey Sachs, FT June 7 2010
En vanlig uppfattning inom ekonomisk forskning är att bubblor är svåra, eller omöjliga, att peka ut innan de brister.
Egenskaperna hos bubblor brukar vara desamma oavsett om det handlar om tulpaner, bopriser eller aktier.
Edward Chancellor, DI 2010-06-04
According to IMF calculations, the credit crunch, bank bailouts and recession only account for 14 per cent of the expected increase in Britain’s public debt burden.
The remaining 86 per cent of the long-term fiscal pressure is caused by the growth of public spending on health, pensions and long-term care.
2020 the majority of the baby-boomers will be retired.
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times June 2, 2010
Top of page
The unemployment rate for teenagers remains at 26.4 percent, while 15.5 percent of African Americans and 12.4 percent of Hispanics can’t find jobs.
Seventeen states, along with the District of Columbia, still have jobless rates well in the double digits, and the fate of the long-term unemployed is terrifying.
Newsweek 4 June 2010
G20 drops support for fiscal stimulus
FT June 5 2010
What’s the greatest threat to our still-fragile economic recovery?
I currently find most ominous is the spread of a destructive idea:
the view that now, less than a year into a weak recovery from the worst slump since World War II, is the time for policy makers to stop helping the jobless and start inflicting pain.
Paul Krugman 30 May 2010
European banks
Waiting for the big one
The Economist print June 3rd 2010
Top of page
Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, estimates
about 2.4 million “missing workers” either left the labor force or did not enter it in the last 28 months.
That is on top of the 15.3 million people who are officially counted as unemployed.
New York Times, 4 Jun 2010
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
The U.S. economy must grow at least 3 percent to create enough jobs for new entrants into the labor force
CNBC 21 Dec 2009
Top of page
G20 central banks are delaying their withdrawal of emergency stimulus
as Europe’s debt crisis shakes financial markets and threatens to hinder the global recovery
Bloomberg 4 June 2010
Swedbank
Folksam anklagas i pantbråk
Uppdrag granskning 2 juni 2010
Jag har länge propagerat för realräntepapper - i USA benämnda TIPS -
och de senaste tre åren tycks det ha varit en god placering.
Rolf Englund 2 juni 2010
Inflation Adjusted S&P500
1996-2010
Force me out if you can.
A growing number of the people whose homes are in foreclosure are refusing to slink away in shame.
They are fashioning a sort of homemade mortgage modification, one that brings their payments all the way down to zero.
NYT 1 Jun 2010
Barney Frank (THE CHAIRMAN OF THE HOUSE FINANCIAL SERVICES COMMITTEE)
Here is Frank saying he didn’t push for housing just last week:
And here is Frank in 2005 saying there is no bubble in the housing market and that subsidizing home ownership is a good plan
Pragmatic Capitalism 22 May 2010
Top of page
“My fear is that we’re going to run into a negative fiscal shock in the eurozone,” says Pontus Braunerhjelm, of the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum.
“Everyone will have to be like the Germans, and that could have a huge impact on demand. But our experience suggests this will force more structural reform in many countries.
If it doesn’t, we risk falling into a vicious downward spiral.”
FT 31 May 2010
Full text
Pontus Braunerhjelm, Wikipedia
Pontus Braunerhjelm hos nejtillemu.com
The fixed-exchange mechanism had gone horribly wrong
The tragedy of the interwar years in Germany was that the Social Democrats - then the world’s foremost socialist party - became fatally tainted by acquiescing in /accepting/ Bruning’s deflation torture from 1930 to 1932.
They did so, of course, because they dared not confront the orthodoxies of the Gold Standard.
The result in Germany was the Reichstag election of July 1932 when the Communists and Nazis won over the half the seats.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 23 May 2010
An ABC of financial shocks and fiscal aftershocks
“But they bailed out Greece,” said the boy. “So why all the turbulence?”
The big point is that investors are not altogether stupid: they know these are temporary patches; they know Greek indebtedness is going to worsen; they know that other countries in peripheral Europe will find it hard to grow out of their plight
Martin Wolf, May 28 2010
Highly recommended
The new OECD Economic Outlook is a terrifying document
OECD wants the Fed to start raising interest rates soon
what’s scary is the utter folly that now passes for respectable opinion
Paul Krugman, NYT 27 May 2010
Top of page
Greece is implementing a sweeping austerity plan.
But the underlying maths of its fiscal problems – with its public debt to gross domestic product forecast to hit 150 per cent – makes it extremely hard to believe that Greece will really fix its woes before the aid runs out.
Gillian Tett, FT May 27 2010
Olof Palme regerade Sverige 1969–1976 och 1982–1986.
I biografen Klas Eklunds ögon var han de ständiga misslyckandenas politiker.
Val förloras. Sveriges ekonomi försämras. Rosornas krig bryter så småningom ut.
Ulrika Kärnborg, Aftonbladet Kultur, 2010-05-21
“This is Susan Webber, a brilliant economist who crossed the lines and, under the pen name Yves Smith, runs Naked Capitalism, the world’s most influential financial blog.
Her account of how Wall Street has brought about the financial crisis in a cynical and calculated way is just chilling”.
Read more here
We aren’t Greece. We are, however, looking more and more like Japan.
Paul Krugman NYT 20 may 2010
Hanteringen av löntagarfonderna har diskuterats ingående i tidigare kapitel och kan svårligen ses som något annat än ett misslyckande.
Fondfrågan blev en lång, plågsam historia för den svenska socialdemokratin och demonstrerade att samspelet mellan partiordföranden och LO-ledningen brast på en rad punkter.
Klas Eklund, i sista kapitlet av sin Palme-bok som Newsmill publicerade ett utdrag ur 2010-05-21.
Top of page
Hösten 2008 var hela det finansiella systemet hotat.
Regeringen införde då en rad stödåtgärder, höjd insättningsgaranti, garantiprogram och kapitaltillskottsprogram.
och en stabilitetsfond som ska finansieras med avgifter från bankerna själva, som en slags försäkring.
Den innebär att bankerna ska betala 0,036 procent av sin balansräkning till fonden varje år.
Andreas Cervenka e24, 21 maj 2010
När Nordea genomförde sin nyemission förra våren gav staten bort teckningsrätter värda 4 miljarder kronor till stabilitetsfonden. Sedan dess har värdet på aktierna stigit med 12 miljarder.
När aktierna säljs går pengarna till bankerna istället för skattebetalarna.
Germans are amazed at global reaction to their fiscal proposals
FT Deutschland had an interesting culture shock article in which it quotes several economists as saying that
Germany’s debt rule, if applied to the whole of the eurozone, is much more likely to result in investor panic than solve the problem.
Eurointelligence 20 may 2010
It is an elementary fact of accounting that the private sector as a whole can only spend less than it earns if some other sector spends more than it earns.
That sector has tended to be the government, usually as automatic stabilizers kicked in while recessions deepened.
nakedcapitalism MAY 17, 2010
Top of page
Det är nu vi måste påbörja ett snabbt utträde ur de offentliga underskotten.
Jag har fått Parlamentets stöd för krav på en snabb återgång till balans i de offentliga finanserna och hänsyn till välfärdens kostnader
Gunnar Hökmark, Europaportalen 20 maj 2010
Behind the drama in Europe lies a global crisis
The euro is under threat – along with our entire free-market system<br />
In Washington the US Senate voted 94:0 to prevent IMF from using its cash to help countries that are inextricably trapped in a debt spiral.
Edmund Conway Daily Telegraph 19 May 2010
"The idea that we’ll be able to close down an institution like Goldman (Sachs) in an orderly way
a business that operates in nearly a hundred countries—is absurd.”
Nouriel Roubini 18 May 2010
2
Husprisökningarna sedan 2000-talets början är inte långsiktigt hållbara
och när Riksbanken kommer att överväga när det är lämpligt att börja höja räntan är huspriser och utlåning några av de variabler som direktionen kommer att granska med stor noggrannhet.
vice riksbankschef Lars Nyberg, DI/Direkt 19 maj 2010
Top of page
Så mycket kostar husen där du bor
Det framgår av SCB.s småhusbarometer till och med april.
E24 18 maj 2010
Riksbankschefen Stefan Ingves är oroad över de svenska hushållens höga skulder.
Det sa han när han talade inför nationalekonomiska föreningen
Ekot 18/5 2010
Guldpriset, Riksbanken och Tomas Fischer
Rolf Englund blog 2010-05-17
Förre statsministern Göran Persson om det ekonomiska stålbadets betydelse.
Godmorgon Världen 16 maj 2010
Här är de dyrste bostadsrätterna som ligger ute till försäljning i internet just nu.
SvD 15/5 2010
Many of the jobs lost during the recession are not coming back.
For the last two years, the weak economy has provided an opportunity for employers to do what they would have done anyway:
dismiss millions of people — like file clerks, ticket agents and autoworkers — who were displaced by technological advances and international trade.
New York Times 13 May 2010
The US trade deficit widened in March to the highest level in more than a year to $40.4 billion
May 12 (Bloomberg)
The End of the Beginning for the Euro
Parallels between Europe's sovereign-debt crisis and the global financial crisis are manifold
Marc de Vos, WSJ,May 12, 2010
"People are sitting in their houses not paying their mortgages, and the banks are letting those delinquencies extend longer and longer periods of time before they put them in foreclosure,"
That, he adds, is the main reason we're seeing lower numbers of new defaults.
The borrowers are in default, but the banks aren't paying attention, so they don't show up in the numbers.
Diana Olick 13 may 2010
The number of US homes being repossessed hit an all-time high last month
Banks took control of 92,432 properties in April, a 45% rise from a year earlier, said RealtyTrac.
BBC 13 maj 2010
"Strategic defaults" now account for nearly one in three foreclosures
The numbers of repossessed properties, also called real-estate owned or REOs, have been boosted by a spike in the number of homeowners voluntarily giving up their homes because their the value has dropped so precipitously.
CNN 13 maj 2010
När man lägger en fastighetsskatt på hus taxerade över
4,5 miljoner kronor så är det vanliga stockholmare som drabbas.
SvD signerat Per Gudmundson 12 maj 2010
Enligt de rödgrönas förslag ska skatten vara en procent av den summa som överstiger 4,5 miljoner,
utöver dagens fasta maxbelopp för fastighetsskatt på drygt 6.362 kronor (inkomståret 2009)
Nästan 8 procent av villor och fritidshus i Stockholms län omfattas av den nya fastighetsskatten.
I Danderyd och Lidingö berörs mer än vartannat hus.
”Det är inte klokt”, säger Göran Hasselskog som bott i samma hus i Bromma i 31 år.
DN 11 maj 2010
German Chancellor Angela Merkel accused the financial industry of playing dirty. "First the banks failed, forcing states to carry out rescue operations. They plunged the global economy over the precipice and we had to launch recovery packages, which increased our debts, and now they are speculating against these debts. That is very treacherous," she said. "Governments must regain supremacy. It is a fight against the markets and I am determined to win this fight".
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 6 May 2010
The Global Crisis of Legitimacy
The greatest systemic risk is not an economic concept but a political one
There were those who were concerned that a united Europe would exist to benefit the elites, rather than the broader public.
George Friedman May 4, 2010 at John Mauldin
DN har skådat ljuset: "Ländernas konkurrenskraft har också betydelse för valutans stabilitet."
Rolf Englund blog 2010-05-07
Problemen i Spanien, Grekland och Portugal kommer även att tynga Sverige.
"Bastionerna är bemannade", säger Anders Borg och hävdar att Riksbanken, regeringen och Riksgäldskontoret har full beredskap.
DI 7/5 2010
"We've seen a crisis start in a country — Greece — become regional, impact the whole of the Euro zone and is on the verge of truly going global,"
El-Erian, CEO of the world's biggest bond fund, CNBC 6/5 2010
Financial markets and rating agencies fail to see
the interconnectedness of government and private debt
Paul De Grauwe Eurointelligence 6/5 2010
Bra film av Johan Norberg om finanskrisen, men utan svar
"överdos - en film om nästa finanskris"
Rolf Englund blog 2010-05-04
Se filmen här
Låga räntor och räddningsaktioner för banker och storföretag
uppmuntrar till samma huvudlösa risktagande som ledde till den värsta finanskrisen sedan 1930-talet
Johan Norberg, DN Debatt 2009-07-25
Finansinspektionen föreslår ett tak för bolån
på max 85 procent av bostadens marknadsvärde.
Ekot 5/5 2010
Oil has been a slumbering giant for nearly a year, but experts say
the world's most important commodity is set to resume its climb back to $100 by this summer at the latest.
Time Magazine 2 may 2010
Top of page
Satsa på en hästkur av samma kraft som Lettland!
Den Atenska smittan kan sprida sig och få förfärliga effekter
Från svensk horisont är det inte så mycket annat att göra än att hoppas
PJ Anders Linder, SvD 2 maj 2010
And that’s why a devaluation would help Greece — it wouldn’t reduce the need for fiscal adjustment, but it would reduce the costs associated with fiscal adjustment.
As I argued yesterday, this difference is an important reason why Britain, with a primary deficit as large as Greece’s, isn’t in anything like the same amount of trouble.
Paul Kruman, May 1st 2010
Dagens globala finanskris har utlöst en kris för ämnet nationalekonomi.
Sökandet efter bättre ekonomisk analys pågår för fullt.
Lars Jonung kolumn DN 29/4 2010
Hur långt är ett snönre?
How long is an "Extended Period"?
Short answer: Longer than many analysts expect.
CalculatedRisk on 4/28/2010 with very nice chart
As of March, banks had an inventory of about 1.1 million foreclosed homes, up 20% from a year earlier
Another 4.8 million mortgage holders were at least 60 days behind on their payments …
Based on the rate at which banks have been selling those foreclosed homes over the past few months, all that inventory, real and shadow, would take 103 months to unload.
TIm Iacono/WSJ nice chart 26/4 2010
Germany
Four professors will launch a legal challenge in early May at the Verfassungsgericht (high court).
Should they secure an injunction, EMU may fly apart.
EMU shut the warning signals, disguising risk.
What investors overlooked is that currency risk mutates into default risk in a monetary union
The EU-IMF "therapy" of deflation for Greece repeats the catastrophic errors of Chancellor Heinrich Bruning in the early 1930s and must lead to a depression
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 25 Apr 2010
Top of page
The Taylor Rule
Professor Taylor made one huge, simplifying assumption, that the neutral real Fed funds rate is a constant 2%.
Paul McCulley April 2010
A year later, the evidence is in: Depression 2.0 has indeed been avoided.
No, I haven’t yet bought that second home. In fact, I actually sold my only one, at a good level, as I was no longer using it, preferring to live in a little rental house on the water where I have my 32-foot fishing boat, named the Moral Hazard, and my 18-foot electric Duffy boat, named the Minsky Moment. Yes, I am sorta non-normal.
Paul McCulley April 2010
Top of page
More evidence has arisen that the "strategic default" consumer spending thesis is correct
- and that the economic recovery on the whole is based on a rotten sham.
In this sleazy imitation of a free market economy, liars, cheats and deadbeats are the ones getting rewarded.
Marcet Oracle, Apr 20, 2010 By: Justice_Litle
Thanks to Ben Bernanke, banks can borrow as much as they want for practically nothing
... plow that cash into longer-dated U.S. Treasuries... and make perpetually huge profits with little to no risk.
It's like a permanent backdoor bailout subsidy.
Marcet Oracle, Apr 20, 2010 By: Justice_Litle
Husboom i USA
2010-04-23
New home sales surged 27 percent in March
as buyers rushed to get under contract in advance of the expiring homebuyer tax credit next week.
As opposed to yesterday’s report on existing home sales that reflect closings, new home sales figures reflect contracts signed.
Tim Iacono, April 23, 2010
Halting the financial doomsday machine
The combination of state insurance (which protects creditors)
with limited liability (which protects shareholders) creates a financial doomsday machine.
Martin Wolf, FT April 21 2010
Economics may be dismal, but it is not a science
The failures of economics in the recent crisis are most evident in two areas:
the inadequacies of the efficient market hypothesis, the bedrock of modern financial economics,
and the irrelevance of recent macroeconomic theory.
John Kay, FT April 13 2010
Top of page
Since the start of the Great Recession in December 2007, the U.S. economy has shed 8.4 million jobs
and failed to create another 2.7 million required by an ever-larger pool of potential workers.
Robert Reich 12/4 2010
Meredith Whitney says unemployment will rise again
So, retail sales are up. Unemployment is down. And the Dow is near 11,000.
That doesn't mean that all is right with the world.
CNN Money April 8, 2010
Top of page
The trade deficit in the U.S. widened in February
increased 7.4 percent to USD 39.7 billion
Bloomberg April 13 2010
Top of page
Svenska fondförmögenheten rekordstor
– Jag tycker att det här visar på optimism. Att konstatera att finanskrisen och det värsta har vi bakom oss och redan 2009 så blev det en uppgång som överträffade allas förväntningar.
Pia Nilsson intervjuad av Louise Andrén Meiton Ekot 13/4 2010
The emotional markets hypothesis and Greek bonds
Gillian Tett, FT April 9 2010
With link to The efficient-markets hypothesis
Top of page
However, there is one fellow who is widely viewed as an expert and who has proven that he actually understands economic reality. His name is Professor Robert Shiller
Financial Armageddon 11/4 2010
Top of page
Caroline Baum questions the accuracy, timeliness, and, ultimately, the usefulness of the Federal Reserve’s main gauge of inflation pressure in the system – the “output gap” – in today’s column at Bloomberg.
timiacono.com/ April 12, 2010
Deflation is the only way Greece can effectively tackle its debt problems,
International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was quoted on Monday as saying.
CNBC 12 Apr 2010
Yet let us be honest. This is not a bail-out for Greece. It is a bail-out for European creditors that account for most of Greece's €391bn external debt (163pc of GDP). As such it is the first line of defence against greater sums at risk across Club Med. The EU rescue shifts the debacle onto taxpayers in order to prevent a systemic crisis
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 11 Apr 2010
Top of page
Greece could alleviate some of its problems by leaving the euro, and devaluing.
But it’s hard to see how Greece could do that without triggering a catastrophic run on its banking system.
Indeed, worried depositors have already begun pulling cash out of Greek banks.
Paul Krugman, New York Times April 8, 2010
Top of page
China may post its first trade deficit in six years
after a surge in imports of commodities and consumer goods, weakening U.S. arguments that the nation is keeping its currency undervalued to gain an advantage.
Bloomberg April 9 2010
Top of page
Fed boss Greenspan says no one saw the crisis coming. Really?
Only in America would it be possible to spawn a financial crisis so devastating that it would collapse the entire world economy.
Jeremy Warner, Daily Telegraph 7 Apr 2010
Top of page
Watching Chuck Prince and Robert Rubin, the former Citigroup chairmen, giving evidence today on the bank’s losses in “super-senior” sub-prime mortgage securities, was not reassuring for anyone seeking lessons from the 2008 financial crisis.
In summary, they told the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission in Washington that the risk management and management structures at Citigroup were state-of-the-art, that regulators were keeping a close eye on the business, and that the board was functioning correctly.
John Gapper FT blog April 8, 2010
IMF:s förre chefsekonom, MIT-professorn Simon Johnson, och hans professorskollega Peter Boone visar i en lång artikel på ekonomibloggen Baselinescenario.com att
Greklands ekonomiska situation är långt värre än vad den var i Argentina under åren 1991-2001, det vill säga fram till det att Argentina ställde in sina betalningar.
Per Lindvall SvD/e24 2010-04-08
Top of page
Robert Rubin, a senior adviser to Citigroup at the time of its deep losses from subprime mortgages,
said he learned belatedly that Citi had $43 billion in high-risk securities on its books.
CNBC 8 Apr 2010
The most audacious monetary experiment in modern history ended on April Fools' Day.
The US Federal Reserve has completed its purchase of $1.7 trillion of mortgage securities, agency debt and US Treasuries,
the conjuring trick of "credit easing" that allowed Ben Bernanke to create stimulus equal to 12pc of GDP.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 04 Apr 2010
Top of page
About Krugmans NYT article “How Did Economists Get It All So Wrong”
The Spanish economist Luis Garicano made himself famous for a day because he was asked by the Queen of England the very question
Paul Krugman: I think that what happened was a combination of two things.
Edward Hugh, Fistfulofeuros, January 3, 2010
I am aware of the commitment of Europe’s elite to the success of the European project.
But the crisis is profound – for the eurozone, the European Union and the world.
As Wolfgang Münchau has pointed out, last week’s European Council was not a solution but a fudge.
Martin Wolf FT March 30 2010
Top of page
Tänk om vi lever i en ny era?
Om lönepengar och lånepengar var rubriken på ett inlägg på denna blog för snart ett halvår sedan.
Rolf Englund blog 30 mars 2010
Due to the length of a typical lifetime and the number of those years that individuals are productive, it’s reasonable to think that someone in their mid-60s could retire today and look back at the last 40 years only to conclude that what they just experienced was normal.
But, what if the last 40 years were anything but normal?
What if, in the world of finance and economics, it was all just a big bubble?
Tim Iacono, 24 March 2010
Top of page
Waiting for the other shoe to drop
Fears are growing of a second dip in the housing market
Sales of new and existing homes have fallen for three consecutive months. As a result inventories have grown, putting downward pressure on home values.
The Economist print March 25th 2010
Världens finansiella system, eller patienten, som Investors vd Börje Ekholm uttrycker saken,
drabbades av ”hjärtattack” för något år sedan. Nu är världens ekonomier tungt dopade med låga räntor för att starta igång systemet igen och faran är inte över.
– Men i Stockholm märker man inte mycket av krisen. Folk korkar upp champagnen på fredag eftermiddag, krogarna är fullsatta och fastighetsmarknaden blomstrar
Börje Ekholm föreslår att stockholmarna lämnar huvudstaden för någon dag och beger sig söderut, till städer som Trollhättan och Göteborg. Där är stämningen en annan.
SvD/e24 2010-03-28
Hyman Minsky, points out that stability leads to instability.
The longer a given condition or trend persists (and the more comfortable we get with it), the more dramatic the correction will be when the trend fails.
The problem with long-term macroeconomic stability is that it tends to produce highly unstable financial arrangements. If we believe that tomorrow and next year will be the same as last week and last year, we are more willing to add debt or postpone savings for current consumption.
Thus, says Minsky, the longer the period of stability, the higher the potential risk for even greater instability when market participants must change their behavior.
John Mauldin 26/3 2010
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the recent rise in Treasury yields represents a “canary in the mine” that may signal further gains in interest rates.
Bloomberg March 26 2010
Top of page
The difference between the benign scenario of a soft landing and a collapse in house prices with a spillover to the financial sector is enormous.
Bubbles eventually burst and economic forecasts implode when bubbles explode.
Wolfgang Munchau, FT 18/9 2006
The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices
Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes,
an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016,
according to the Congressional Budget Office
NYT, March 24, 2010
Germany should boost domestic demand and wages to ease the lopsided euro-region trade flows
that restrict growth in economies from Greece to Portugal, Bank of England policy maker Adam Posen said.
Bloomberg March 25 2010
Hans-Werner Sinn's remarks are apparently listened to as closely as are the Federal Reserve Chairman's remarks in the US. He said:
The Greek drama will have a 'frightful' ('schreklich') ending no matter which course of action is taken.
The objective is to avoid having a Greek default trigger another banking crisis across the EU.
John Mauldin 22/3 2010
The world's oil reserves have been exaggerated by up to a third,
according to Sir David King, the Government's former chief scientist, who has warned of shortages and price spikes within years.
Daily Telegraph 22 March 2010
Whatever you think about fractional reserve banking the truth is that we no longer have it.
Reserve requirements apply only to transaction accounts, which are components of M1, a narrowly defined measure of money. Deposits that are components of M2 and M3 (but not M1), such as savings accounts and time deposits, have no reserve requirements and therefore can expand without regard to reserve levels.
Washingtons blog 21/3 2010
Top of page
The orthodoxy on inflation is certainly shifting.
The best policy may well be to talk tough about inflation while keeping interest rates low for as long as possible.
The Economist print March 11th 2010
World leaders are choosing recession
The world economy will not grow as it did during the boom, so how will it now expand?
That is the cardinal problem in macroeconomics.
FT Editorial March 19 2010
IOU: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay.
By John Lanchester. Simon & Schuster
Published in Britain by Allen Lane as “Whoops! Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay”
The Economist 18/3 2010
Det finns alltid bedömare som i vaga ordalag hävdar att utvecklingen kommer att gå åt skogen. Svårigheten ligger i att kunna skilja fantasterna från dem som har hittat fundamentala orosfaktorer av sådan karaktär att de borde tas på allvar.
En sådan person är den iransk-israeliske ekonomen Nouriel Roubini
Vad som skulle behövas är en utvärdering av varför Roubinis varningar inte togs på allvar. Hur såg de första varningarna i september 2006 ut?
Danne Nordling 16/3 2010
Top of page
China and Germany unite to impose global deflation
Germany is in a supposedly irrevocable currency union with some of its principal customers. It now wants them to deflate their way to prosperity in a world of chronically weak aggregate demand.
I am beginning to wonder whether the open global economy is going to survive this crisis.
The eurozone may also be in some danger.
Martin Wolf, FT March 16 2010
Does nobody read German any more?
As of today, German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble has not yet agreed to anything beyond a last resort rescue “if insolvency were imminent” and if there were to be a threat to the “financial stability of the euro area as a whole”.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard March 16th, 2010
Very Important Article
Lessons from the collapse of Bear Stearns
In March 2008, Bear had tangible equity capital of about $11bn supporting total assets of $395bn – a leverage ratio of 36.
FT, John Cassidy March 14 2010
i Spanien har valutavärdet mer än fördubblats
Finansanalytikern Peter Malmqvist konstaterade nyligen i Dagens industri:
”Den svenska kronan är industrivärldens svagaste valuta.
Oavsett under vilken tidsperiod och mot vilket industriland vi mäter, har den svenska kronan försvagats markant."
Olle Wästbergs nyhetsbrev 22 Februari 2010
Nearing Retirement and Unemployed or Underemployed
One of the groups seriously impacted by the great recession is the "pre retirement" generation - currently the "Baby Boomers" - the workers between the ages of 45 and 64.
CalculatedRisk 13/3 2010
Top of page
Harry Schein är ett av mina tre stora – och ouppnåeliga – föredömen i just kolumnistrollen.
De andra är Anders Isaksson i Dagens Industri och senare DN och Allan Fagerström i Aftonbladet.
De är borta nu, men deras intellektuella stringens, formuleringskonst och bildning lever vidare i texterna.
Per T Ohlsson, Sydsvenskan 7 mars 2010
Kommentar av Rolf Englund
Harry Schein: "Risken med att vara rolig är att folk tror att man skämtar"
Det citatet har jag sedan länge på min startsida
Report into the collapse of Lehman Brothers
Business Week, FT editorial
Germans like to believe that they made a huge sacrifice in giving up their beloved D-mark ten years ago, but
they have in truth benefited more than anyone else from the euro.
Almost half of Germany’s exports go to other euro-area countries that can no longer resort to devaluation to counter German competitiveness.
The Economist print March 11th 2010
Leading the PIIGS to an (as yet) Unrecognized Slaughter
Everyone cannot export their way out of this crisis.
Someone has to actually run a current account deficit.
Rob Parenteau at John Mauldin 9/3 2010
Top of page
Arun Motianey, author of the book "SuperCycles" and director Roubini's:
The global economy is entering a next "supercycle" phase
that will generate inflation necessary for recovery
CNBC 10 Mar 2010
Establishing the EMF would require a new treaty
We must note an even greater difficulty. The notion that the big threat is fiscal indiscipline is false.
Martin Wolf FT March 9 2010
Everyone has a theory about the financial crisis.
But what do we really know?
Paul Krugman March 7, 2010
The economy shed 36,000 jobs last month
With the latest monthly tally, 8.4 million jobs have been lost since the recession began in December 2007.
Another 2.7 million jobs needed to absorb new workers were never created, leaving the economy bereft of 11.1 million jobs.
New York Times editorial March 5, 2010
Policymakers are desperate to unwind the “unconventional support”, to activate “exit strategies” and begin the long march back to normality.
But there is still little sign of the sustained private-sector recovery required to take up the slack.
Jeremy Warner Daily telegraph 5 Mar 2010
"The preservation of a sense of national identity"
What is the long-term justification for putting taxpayers on the line to subsidize homeownership?
Is this nothing more than a sacred cow in American society — a political necessity because so many voters own homes and are mindful of their resale value?
Robert J. Shiller, New York Times March 5, 2010
Top of page
At the level of the early 80s.
A very nice graph shows the employment-population ratio;
this is the ratio of employed Americans to the adult population.
Calculated Risk 5 March 2010
Roger E. Alcaly about
Getting Off Track: How Government Actions and Interventions Caused, Prolonged, and Worsened the Financial Crisis
by John B. Taylor
NYRB Volume 57, Number 5 March 25, 2010
Even long-term rates are low — the real interest rate on
10-year bonds is below 1.5 percent.
Paul Krugman NYT March 5, 2010
Keynes och moral hazard
Min hypotes är att det finns en makroekonomisk moral hazard (ung trygghetsrisktagande) som innebär att själva föreställningen, att det finns en kraftfull stabiliseringspolitik att ta till om det skulle gå snett, kan leda till stora obalanser.
Danne Nordling 4 mars 2010
även om deras slutsatser skiljer sig åt är både Hayeks och Keynes teorier födda ur rädsla.
De är inte utopiska, de utlovar inget framtida lyckorike. De säger bara att den som följer deras läror har en god chans att undvika social kollaps, anarki och diktatur.
DN-ledare 4 mars 2010 signerad Henrik Berggren
"I allt väsentligt kan staten jämföras med hushållet", skriver Svegfors,
med en formulering som kan komma att bli (herostratiskt?) ryktbar.
ökar penningmängden för mycket kan det bli överhettning i ekonomin.
Att det läget inte nu råder beror på att andra aktörer, hushåll, byggbolag, banker, ägnar sig åt kreditkontraktion, i st f kreditexpansion som under 80-talet.
Mats Svegfors har humor. Det framgår av att han idag 940531 skriver att Keynes och Friedman har tänkt fel och att Anne Wibble har tänkt rätt.
Rolf Englund 13 jun 1994
Top of page
The big intolerably uncertain question for Britain and America (and for Greece, Ireland and others) is
can we reduce our debts in an orderly way
- one which would be gruelling for us, as we save more and consume less, but not unbearable?
Robert Peston, the BBC's business editor, 30 December 2009
Premier Wen Jiabao calls China’s economic growth path “unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.”
Bloomberg March 4 2010
$1,000bn
Median single family house prices nationwide are down by slightly more than 30 per cent from their early 2006 peak.
Roughly one in four mortgages today exceeds the house’s value – approximately 10.7m homes.
Mort Zuckerman, FT March 4 2010
The “inflation fundamentalists”
This elite of central bankers, top economic officials, politicians, academics and journalists maintains the risks of allowing inflation to climb above 2 per cent are unacceptable.
Uri Dadush and Moisés Naím, FT March 4 2010
With comment by Rolf Englund
This misunderstanding pops up now and then, also in this article:
"the disastrous experience with hyperinflation in Germany in the 1930s"
But the hyperinflation was in the 1920s, not in the 1930s.
In the 1930s there was unemploymnet, as we all know.
Rolf Englund FT March 4 2010
Greece desperately needs €20 billion ($27 billion) in the next two months to roll over expiring debt.
“We want to be able to borrow at the same rates as other euro-zone countries,” Mr Papandreou said, perhaps optimistically.
On the other hand, as he has also pointed out, Greece cannot afford to go on borrowing indefinitely at 350 basis points over Germany.
The gains from austerity measures could be swallowed up by such a high debt premium.
The Economist print Mar 4th 2010
Top of page
We need a Plan B to curb the debt headwinds
An unsustainable level of private sector debt
is the main factor explaining the present severe downturn,
as well as many previous downturns in history.
William White FT March 2 2010
“I would be cheering for the return of the Glass-Steagall Act,”
John Bogle, founder of mutual fund giant Vanguard Group
CNBC March 2, 2010
To begin with, let’s get reacquainted with the fundamental economic problem of our age – lack of global aggregate demand – and how we got to where we are today:
(1) Twenty years of accelerated globalisation incrementally undermined the real incomes of most developed countries’ workers/citizens,
forcing governments to promote leverage and asset price appreciation in order to fill in what is known as an “aggregate demand” gap – making sure that consumers keep buying things.
Bill Gross March 2010
Despite? Should it not have been "by a fall in GDP...." ?
Right, hamnaren! Shame on The Economist:)
Hämnaren från åkersberga får medhåll hos The Economist
Barack Obama's home state of Illinois is near the point of fiscal disintegration.
"We are next to bankruptcy. We have a $13bn hole in a $28bn budget."
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 28 Feb 2010
Top of page
Fantasy Economies
the name that was popular the last time we were in this same position:
The Goldilocks Economy, the BEARS always come home.
Aubie Baltin February 5, 2010
Both groups might be right.
The Sunday Times letter argued that “the government’s goal should be to eliminate the structural current budget deficit over the course of a parliament”, instead of the two planned by the government.
In response, opponents argued that it would be foolish to slash the structural deficit if this led to a deeper recession and so to an offsetting rise in the cyclical deficit.
Martin Wolf February 25 2010
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke:
"Indeed, more than 40 percent of the unemployed have been out of work six months or more, nearly double the share of a year ago,"
CNN February 24, 2010
Larger polygamous financial institutions were allowed by the Basel capital regime to run with lower capital buffers than their smaller monogamous partners.
John Plender Ft Feruary 23 2010
Anybody who looks carefully at the world economy will recognise that
a degree of monetary and fiscal stimulus
unprecedented in peacetime is all that is prodding it along
The conventional wisdom is that it will also be possible to manage a smooth exit.
Nothing seems less likely. So let us consider the endgame, instead.
Martin Wolf, FT February 23 2010
20 procent lägre bostadspriser än i dag
Huspriskorrigeringen som drabbat många andra länder de senaste åren kommer och frågan är bara när.
Den kan slå hårt mot många högbelånade hushåll,
säger Bengt Hansson, analytiker på Statens bostadskreditnämnd, BKN
till DN/TT 23/2 2010.
The doomsday cycle
Over the last 30 years, the US financial system has grown to proportions threatening the global economic order.
This column suggests a ‘doomsday cycle’ has infiltrated the economic system and could lead to disaster after the next financial crisis.
Peter Boone, Simon Johnson, 22 February 2010
Very Important Aritcle
Top of page
Swedbank har ett värde i balansräkningen på sina tre baltiska verksamheter på 31,8 miljarder kronor. Nästan hälften, 12,6 miljarder kronor, motsvaras inte av några materiella tillgångar, utan kallas goodwill.
Swedbanks uppenbara övervärdering har också betydelse för Sveriges anseende som utvecklad börsnation.
Peter Malmqvist DI 2010-02-22
- Det är klart att Göran Perssons historiska insats är monumentalt betydelsefull för Sverige. Vi kan ha haft olika synpunkter på hur man borde sanerat vår ekonomi. Men den sanering de gjorde är oerhört viktig för att vi har en god ordning i vår ekonomi.
Anders Borg ref. i DN 2010-02-19
The risk premium on Greek government bonds continues to hover around 3 per cent, depriving Greece of much of the benefit of euro membership. If this continues, there is a real danger that Greece may not be able to extricate itself from its predicament whatever it does. Further budget cuts would further depress economic activity, reducing tax revenues and worsening the debt-to-GNP ratio. Given that danger, the risk premium will not revert to its previous level in the absence of outside assistance.
George Soros FT February 21 2010
What we’re doing now is moving in the wrong direction, with real interest rates rising even as the nominal rate remains at zero.
Paul Krugman February 19, 2010
Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s chief economist called for several bold innovations.
Central banks should raise their inflation targets—perhaps to 4% from the standard 2% or so.
The Economist print Feb 18th 2010
March 6 marks the first anniversary of the world not coming to an end.
The world economy has, it seems, been saved from a fate even worse than our Great Recession.
James Grant February 19, 2010
On that date one year ago, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index put in its low.
The broken bones of credit began to knit, and the economy stopped shrinking and resumed growing.
So powerful is the recovery today that it is almost possible to imagine a company hiring an employee and a bank making a new loan. Compared to the darkness of the abyss, even a partly cloudy sky looks dazzling.
James Grant
Top of page
Cantillon, en irländsk ekonom, bankir och börsspekulant på 1700-talet, var först med att poängtera att
effekten av penningpolitiken beror på de kanaler genom vilka nya pengar pumpas in i samhällsekonomin,
på vem som får pengarna och vad de används till.
Lars Jonung Kolumn DN 2009-12-17
Top of page
I never imagined that mark-to-market accounting would be the theme of a sell-out musical comedy.
But if you beg, borrow or steal a ticket for Enron at the Noël Coward theatre in London’s West End, you will discover that the financial crisis has made a topic that was once a guaranteed conversation-stopper the talk of the town.
John Kay FT February 16 2010
Top of page
Jumps in fiscal deficits are the mirror image of retrenchment by battered private sectors.
In the US, the financial balance of the private sector (the gap between income and expenditure) shifted from minus 2.1 per cent of GDP in the fourth quarter of 2007 to plus 6.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2009, a swing of 8.8 per cent of GDP.
Martin Wolf February 16 2010
Top of page
"This moment is a turning point for Emu, and for the future of Europe."
It seems that quite a number of observers have forgotten what Emu is, and what it is not.
Financial aid from other EU countries or institutions that amounted, directly or indirectly, to a bail-out would violate EU treaties and undermine the foundations of Emu.
Such principles do not allow for compromise.
Once Greece was helped, the dam would be broken. A bail-out for the country that broke the rules would make it impossible to deny aid to others.
Otmar Issing, February 15 2010
How many Irish people have even noticed what is happening in Latvia?
But if the entire periphery found itself having to fight market panic by cutting in an excessive fashion, simultaneously, that could be very dangerous — especially if Spain, or, God forbid, Italy, became involved as well.
Kevin O’Rourke, The Irish Economy 14/2 2010
Top of page
The PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain) are old hat.
The new acronym on trading floors for possible dominoes if Greece should fall is STUPID (Spain, Turkey, UK, Portugal, Italy, Dubai).
The Case For Higher Inflation
Olivier Blanchard, currently the chief economist at the IMF,
conclusion, central banks have been setting their inflation targets too low
I’m not that surprised that Olivier should think that; I am, however, somewhat surprised that the IMF is letting him say that under its auspices. In any case, I very much agree.
Paul Krugman, Febr 13 2010
Cirka 55000 kronor per kvadratmeter är snittpriset för januari i år, enligt Mäklarstatistik.
Priserna i centrala Stockholm ser ut att närma sig nya rekordnivåer
är en bubbla på väg att brista?
SvD 13/2 2010
Riskerna för ett prisfall på bostäder ökar
Handelsbanken: huspriserna kan falla med nära 10 procent
Statens bostadskreditnämnd spår prisfall runt 20 procent
SvD/E24 2010-02-13
Sarkozy, Merkel, Bildt och den politiska viljan
Rolf Englund blog 2010-02-12
Goldman Sachs and other banks should give up their bank status if they want to avoid the ban on proprietary trading proposed by the White House,
Paul Volcker, head of President Barack Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, FT February 12 2010
Det är ohyggligt underskattat vad räntan betyder. En snabb kalkyl visar att hushållens skuldsättning är ungefär 2 300 miljarder kronor. Skulle räntan stiga 2,2 procent, lika mycket som den har sjunkit under det senaste året, så motsvarar det ungefär, om lönesumman i Sverige är 1 300 miljarder kronor, fyra kronor i kommunalskattehöjning.
Det är stimulansens storlek. Det är en våldsamt kraftfull spak, den här räntan. Avvägningen av hur det ska gå till blir en rysare.
Göran Persson, Affärsvärlden 11/2 2010
The US trade deficit rose to $40.2bn in December,
10% higher than in November and the largest for 12 months.
BBC 10/2 2010
Drygt 26 miljarder kronor rann ut ur Swedbank, SEB och Nordea kreditförluster i Baltikum.
52 miljarder kronor blev bankernas totala nota för kreditförluster under 2009.
DI 2010-02-10
Top of page
German exposure to the region amounts to €43bn in Greece, €47bn in Portugal, €193bn in Ireland, and €240bn in Spain,
according to the Bank for International Settlements.
German lenders are already vulnerable, with the world's lowest risk-adjusted capital ratios bar Japan.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 10/2 2010
Jesper Katz och Johnny Munkhammar:
Ge inget EU-stöd till Grekland
Vanligtvis leder sänkta statliga utgifter till minskad tillväxt tillfälligt, men om det leder till sänkta räntor kan en budgetsanering ge högre tillväxt än vad som annars vore fallet.
Europaportalen 2010-02-04
Riksbankens direktion har beslutat att tillsätta en utredning om risker på den svenska bostadsmarknaden.
Bakgrunden är att bostadspriserna har stigit kraftigt under flera år.
"Hittills har vi inte gjort bedömningen att det finns någon bubbla på bostadsmarknaden", säger Mattias Persson på avdelningen finansiell stabilitet."Det finns flera faktorer som talar för att prisuppgången i Sverige beror på fundamentala faktorer.
Men det kan också finnas risker på den svenska bostadsmarknaden", skriver Riksbanken i ett pressmeddelande.
DI 9/2 2010
Top of page
Greece's drama has already metastasised into a wider systemic crisis.
For the third time in 18 months the global financial system risks spinning out of control
Flow data shows an abrupt withdrawal of German and Asian capital from Club Med debt markets.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 07 Feb 2010
Whether he likes it or not, Jean-Claude Trichet is not just the president of the European Central Bank.
Mr. Trichet, 67, is also the de facto president of Europe,
at least for the 16 nations that rely on the euro as their common currency.
Jack Ewing. The New York Times, 8 February 2010.
VIA - Very Important Article with good links, if I may say so
Top of page
For all the concern over the $1.6 trillion U.S. budget deficit and record debt load,
the dollar is as valuable now as 35 years ago.
Bloomberg Feb. 8, 2010
Spain is an object lesson in the problems of having
monetary union without fiscal and labor market integration.
Paul Krungman, New York Times, February 5, 2010
The last few days have reminded me of the speculative attacks
on sterling and the Italian lira in September 1992.
Wolfgang Münchau February 7 2010
Top of page
Such panics are easily triggered and difficult to stop.
Greek 10-year borrowing costs, at 6.7 per cent, are about 2 percentage points dearer than Ireland or Portugal, the two next riskiest eurozone sovereigns. This air of danger has infected Greek businesses.
Financial Times editorial February 5 2010
Total job loss from the start of the recession to 8.4 million.
Tim Iacono 2010-02-05
The BIGGEST Financial Weapon of Mass Destruction
Treasury Bonds with maturities of 10 years or more
Aubie Baltin January 15, 2010
Top of page
The US unemployment rate fell unexpectedly from 10 percent to 9.7 percent in January,
as black unemployment remained high at 16.5 percent.
thedailyvoice.com febr 2010
Bankerna är ett oligopol som tjänar enorma pengar på att ge dyra lån till företagen.
Hans företag tvingas betala 5-6 procent medan hushållen med rörlig ränta bara betalar drygt 1 procent.
Problemets kärna är bankernas kapitaltäckningsregler
PR-firman Kreabs grundare Peje Emilsson SvD/E24 2010-02-05
U.S. payrolls fell but the unemployment rate dropped
The number of "discouraged job seekers" rose to 1.1 million in January from 734,000 a year ago.
CNBC 5 Feb 2010
The US long-term unemployed now make up roughly 40% of all unemployed.
That's more than six million people
BBC 5 February 2010
Should Germany bail out Club Med or leave the euro altogether?
Germany faces a terrible dilemma. Either Europe's paymaster agrees to underwrite a Greek bail-out and drops its vehement opposition to a de facto EU economic government, treasury, and debt union, or the euro will start to unravel,
and with it Germany's strategic investment in the post-war order.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 31 Jan 2010
Top of page
Experts in Athens told the country's parliament that it had
uncovered €40bn of "hidden debts"
during an investigation into past manipulation by the financial authorities.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 02 Feb 2010
Greece is not the only country with problems.
The eurozone has a structural flaw in the shape of a north-south financial imbalance.
John Plender, February 2 2010
Should Greece be left to go bust?
Otmar Issing, a former board member of the European Central Bank, says an EU rescue would be disastrous.
The Economist online Feb 3rd 2010
Top of page
4.5 million homeowners
When a home’s value falls below 75 percent of the amount owed on the mortgage,
the owner starts to think hard about walking away, even if he or she has the money to keep paying.
The New York Times, 3 Feb 2010
This U.S. debt to GDP started accelerating in the 1960s
the first decade of this century when it took over $6 to generate an additional $1 of GDP.
Comstock january 2010
If new-classical and new-Keynesian economics are both wrong, where do we go from here?
For 30 years, macroeconomists have been of two stripes: new-classical and new-Keynesian.
Neither has anything interesting to say about the current crisis.
Roger E.A. Farmer FT January 28, 2010
Top of page
We need to learn from those countries that evidently did it right. And leading that list is our neighbor to the north. Right now,
Canada is a very important role model.
PAUL KRUGMAN January 31, 2010
Former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson admitted that saying Lehman Brothers would not get a government bailout was a ploy in the negotiations
His new book on the financial crisis,
"On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System."
CNBC Feb 2010
British chancellor Alistair Darling said Britain would not join any European effort to bail out Greece
FT January 29 2010
As retiring Baby Boomers flee to safer investments, some analysts fear there will be too many stocks and too few investors. But, a lot depends on how many of the more than 70 million Boomers can really afford a more conservative investing style, as they try to recover from a lost decade for the stock market
CNBC 1 Feb 2010
What the eurozone must do if it is to survive
The clear and present danger to the eurozone is Spain.
Wolfgang Münchau January 31 2010
Armageddon at Parthenon?(nice pic)
The yield on 10-year Greek bonds blasted upwards by over 40 basis points to 7.15pc in a day of wild trading.
Spreads over German Bunds reached almost four percentage points,
by far the highest since Greece joined the euro, and close to levels that risk a self-feeding spiral.
Contagion hit Portuguese, Spanish, Irish, and Italian bonds.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 28 Jan 2010
The deeper concern is Spain, where youth unemployment has reached 44pc
and the housing bust has a long way to run.
Nouriel Roubini said Spain is too big to contain.
"If Greece goes under that's a problem for the eurozone. If Spain goes under it's a disaster," he said
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 28 Jan 2010
When central banks start implementing exit strategies,
there is the potential to deliver a whole new range of currency upheaval,
particularly in relation to the crucial, but oft-ignored, issue of the dollar carry trade.
Gillian Tett in Davos January 28 2010
Nine European banks have balance sheets that are larger than the GDP of their country.
Eurointelligence 28/1 2010
The Volcker rule – that deposit-taking banks would not be able to engage in proprietary trading, or to own hedge funds or private equity firms – is the first time any government has proposed a sensible structural remedy for the problems created by bailing out banks in 2008.
John Gapper FT January 27 2010
Roubini said he’s never been more pessimistic about the future of European monetary union,
saying Spain poses a looming threat to the euro region holding together.
“Down the line, not this year or two years from now, we could have a breakup of the monetary union,”
Roubini said in a Bloomberg Radio interview from the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos
Bloomberg Jan. 27 2010
“Volcker Rule”
As Paul Tucker, deputy governor of the Bank of England, noted in an important recent speech,
“shadow banking” also had to be rescued.
Any institution that promises to redeem its liabilities on demand, while investing in longer-term or riskier assets, has bank-like characteristics and is vulnerable to a run.
Martin Wolf January 26 2010
World Economic Forum, Davos 2010
BBC Special Report
How the market can control the banks
bondholders keep bank risk-taking under control - and bear the costs if they fail
James Mackintosh FT-blog January 24, 2010
Tishman Speyer and BlackRock walking away from Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in Manhattan.
Trying to refi $4.4 billion in debt on the 11,200-apartment property, to no avail.
Tishman and buddies walked away from the equivalent of 38 thousand mortgages
So now they're handing over the keys to the lenders.
CNBC 25 Jan 2010
World Economic Forum, Davos 2010
BBC Special Report
Writing in the NYT, Richard Thaler provides the disturbing potential conclusion on homeowners changing their viewpoint and strategically defaulting:
"An important implication is that we could be facing another wave of foreclosures, spurred less by spells of unemployment and more by strategic thinking. Research shows that bankruptcies and foreclosures are “contagious.” People are less likely to think it’s immoral to walk away from their home if they know others who have done so. And if enough people do it, the stigma begins to erode."
If enough people do it, the housing market collapses.
CNBC 25 Jan 2010
China: 'Dubai times 1,000'?
James S Chanos
He is planning a speech later this month at the University of Oxford to drive home his point.
THE NEW YORK TIMES and Todayonline Jan 08, 2010
Att stänga av respiratorn
Nu ska räddningspaketen avvecklas.
Första stegen blir strypta lån och högre räntor.
§
Anders Billing Fokus 22/1 2010
The management of the Greek economic crisis raises some disturbing parallels with the aftermath of the Peloponnesian war. The war ended in 404BC
I fear something similar might happen if the eurozone were to impose austerity from the outside, as a quid pro quo for a possible bail-out, which may become necessary if the Greek government were to get into financial difficulty.
Wolfgang Münchau January 22 2010
Priserna på bostäder är på en hög nivå.
Mätt i relation till boendekostnaden (”hyran”) är priserna idag i nivå med tidigare toppar från åttio- och nittiotalen.
Den historiska utvecklingen visar att höga bostadspriser i relation till ”hyran” följs av en låg avkastning på boendet till följd av fallande bostadspriser.
Det finns liten eller ingen anledning att tro att det skall vara annorlunda
Statens Bostadskreditnämnd, Oktober 2009
Basel 3
The Basel regime (European and American banks use either version 1 or 2) represents a monumental, decades-long effort at perfection, with minimum capital requirements carefully calculated from detailed formulae.
The answers were precisely wrong.
Five days before its bankruptcy Lehman Brothers boasted a “Tier 1” capital ratio of 11%, almost three times the regulatory minimum.
The Economist print Jan 21st 2010
The Death of Davos Man
Bruce Nussbaum Businessweek January 21, 2010
Never again will the American taxpayer be held hostage
by banks that are too big to fail
President Obama BBC 22/1 2010
The Greek government has promised to slash its fiscal deficit
from an estimated 12.7 per cent of gross domestic product last year to 3 per cent in 2012.
Is it plausible that this will happen? Not very.
But Greece is merely the canary in the fiscal coal mine.
Other eurozone members are also under pressure to slash fiscal deficits.
What might such pressure do to vulnerable members, to the eurozone and to the world economy?
Martin Wolf, January 19 2010
Some, knowing of my opposition to UK membership of the eurozone, may suppose that I find some pleasure in these looming difficulties.
On the contrary, I fear the dangerous consequences.
Martin Wolf, January 19 2010
Who is going to buy the multiple trillions in government debt that the G-7 countries want to issue? The dollar may be the worst currency in the world, except for all the others.
Where do you put your reserves? The dollar? The euro? Really? The euro is not a currency, it is an experiment.
I think Spain is an even bigger nightmare for the EU when compared to relatively small Greece.
Italy? Belgium? Portugal? All those countries (and their voters) will be watching to see how the EU deals with Greece. The potential for volatility in the euro is just huge.
Walt Ratterman at John Mauldin January 15, 2010
Forex lending represents around 91 per cent of the total in Latvia, 87 per cent in Estonia and 72 per cent in Lithuania
and over 50 per cent in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria
a senior official at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development FT 19/1 2010
"An awful lot of people are not managing their own money,"
"In old-style 19th Century capitalism, I owned my company, I made a mistake, I bore the consequences."
Joseph Stiglitz, Columbia University professor and Nobel laureate CNBC 19/1 2010
The corporation is a wonderful institution. But it contains inherent drawbacks, at the core of which are conflicts of interest. Control over the company's resources is vested in the hands of top managers who may rationally pursue their interests at the expense of all others.
Economists call this the "principal-agent" problem.
In the modern economy, where shares are held by fund managers, there is not just one set of principal-agent relations but a long chain of them.
Martin Wolf Financial Times Jan 30 2002
Tio tecken på en bostadsbubbla
Att säga att vi har en överhettad bostadsmarknad i Sverige är kanske att sparka in en tältöppning, men
här är några saker som talar för att Sverige blivit en drivbänk där något riktigt läskigt kunnat gro under lång tid.
Andreas Cervenka SvD/e24 2010-01-17
Soros: En andra recession, 2010 eller 2011.
Rolf Englund blog 19/1 2010
Finanskrisens problem löstes genom att socialisera riskerna och efterfrågan
Det behövs ”en uthållig ökning av den privata sektorns efterfrågan”
"alla länder kan inte samtidigt ha exportledd tillväxt"
Martin Wolf intervjuad i SvD/e24 av Johan Myrsten 2010-01-16
The curse of long-term unemployment
Only about 400,000 more Americans were employed in December 2009 than in December 1999,
while the population grew by nearly 30m.
The Economist print Jan 14th 2010
The City and Wall Street, the last bastions of Marxist workers’ control
Why did financiers think they could get away with rewarding themselves so lavishly?
The answer lies in Tito’s Yugoslavia
Anatole Kaletsky The Times January 14, 2010
Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou said there was "no chance" that Greece would exit the euro zone,
as the country's reform plans came under renewed criticism from the European Central Bank.
WSJ 14/1 2010
Bostadsbubblan en opinionsbubbla?
Inte ens 2011 kommer bostadsinvesteringarna att ha återhämtat sig till tidigare nivåer.
Hur kan det komma sig?
är efterfrågan på bostäder för låg? Varför varnar en del experter i så fall för fortsatta prisstegringar och framtida bubblor som kommer att brista med prisfall som följd?
Danne Nordling 11/1 2010
Superräntan fick lägenheter och villor att stiga med
20 respektive 10 procent under helåret 2009 - mitt i lågkonjunturen.
DI 2010-01-14
Japan’s experience strongly suggests that even sustained fiscal deficits, zero interest rates and quantitative easing will not lead to soaring inflation in post-bubble economies suffering from excess capacity and a balance-sheet overhang, such as the US.
It also suggests that unwinding from such excesses is a long-term process.
Martin Wolf, January 12 2010
ARMS
Thousands of American homeowners are starting to see their monthly mortgage payments skyrocket, dealing a fresh blow to the already shaky housing recovery.
CNBC 12 Jan 2010
The trade deficit in the U.S. widened in November to $36.4 billion
Exports increased 0.9 percent, the seventh consecutive gain, to $138.2 billion
Imports increased 2.6 percent, reflecting a jump in oil prices, to 174,6
Bloomberg Jan. 12 2010
The Fed and the Crisis: A Reply to Ben Bernanke
In his recent speech, the Fed chairman denied that too-low interest rates were responsible.
Does this mean we're headed for a new boom-bust cycle?
John B. Taylor WSJ JANUARY 10, 2010
America slides deeper into depression
The home foreclosure guillotine usually drops a year or so after people lose their job, and exhaust their savings.
One million American families lost their homes in the fourth quarter.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 10 Jan 2010
Let the finger-pointing begin.
This week the commission to investigate the causes of the financial crisis will hold its first public hearing.
First up to be accused of causing massive foreclosures, nearly bankrupting our financial system and robbing us all of our retirement savings: Wall Street CEOs.
TIME 11/1 2010
Enligt marknaden för CDS-kontrakt, är det just nu allra högst risk att låna ut till Ukraina, Argentina och Venezuela.
Grekland, Island, Lettland och Dubai är andra länder som hamnar i pestligan på den internationella marknaden för statspapper med urusla kreditbetyg.
DI 11/1 2010
Unemployment in the eurozone 10 per cent for the first time since the introduction of the single currency.
Despite extraordinary measures to protect the labour market during the downturn, 4m have lost jobs across the 16 countries that use the euro, according to the European Commission’s statistical arm.
FT January 8 2010
“The actual unemployment rate is higher than shown by the official numbers,”
Had the labor force not decreased by 661,000 last month, the jobless rate would have been 10.4 percent
Bloomberg 2010 Jan. 9
Once again, cheap money is driving up asset prices
"commercial banks are causing a bubble to develop in government-bond markets"
The Economist print Jan 7th 2010
The European Central Bank has given its clearest warning to date that
there will be no EU bail-out for Greece if it fails to control its spiralling deficit,
raising the stakes in a game of brinkmanship over the future of the euro.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 6 Jan 2010
Nice pic of dark clouds over Acropolis
Har centralbankernas inflationsmålspolitik bidragit till krisen?
Hur kommer det sig att Keynes återuppstått?
Klas Eklund December 27th, 2009
Vem ska avgöra om kreditgivningen till bostadssektorn skapar svårhanterliga risker eller inte?
Vem ska bestämma när det är dags att sänka belåningsgrader och öka krav på amortering?
Dessa frågor kräver svar snarast.
Stefan Ingves DN Debatt 2009-12-31
Southern Europe is being ordered to carry out IMF-style austerity, without the IMF-style devaluation required to rectify the massive imbalances that have built up between North and South under the euro.
The victims are caught like France and Germany under the Gold Standard of the early 1930s, when society was broken on a wheel of deflation decrees.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 20 Dec 2009
The Bank for International Settlements will gather top central bankers and financiers for a meeting in Basel this weekend amid rising concern about a resurgence of the “excessive risk-taking” that sparked the financial crisis.
“The concern here is that the prolonged assurance of very cheap and ample funding may encourage excessive risk-taking,” the BIS invitation note says.
FT January 6 2010
As the great bear rally of 2009 runs into the greater Chinese Wall of excess global capacity, it will become clear that we are in the grip of a 21st Century Depression
– more akin to Japan's Lost Decade than the 1840s or 1930s, but nothing like the normal cycles of the post-War era.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
Posted to John Mauldin's Outside the Box on 4/1 2010
The cause of our crises has not gone away
We should listen to /Iceland/ before the same message is conveyed in much more violent form, in another place and at another time.
John Kay FT January 5 2010
The eurozone’s next decade will be tough
Many have argued that, within a currency union, current account deficits do not matter
any more than between Yorkshire and Lancashire.
They are wrong.
Martin Wolf January 5 2010
USA:s huspriser övervärderade med 14,0 procent
Spanska huspriser övervärderde med 55,1 procent
Svenska huspriser övervärderade med 34,7 procent
Engelska huspriser övervärderade med 28,8 procent
The Economist print Decembet 30th 2009
Even the normally sober Martin Wolf has fallen for this line (FT, December 16 2009). The pre-crisis UK economy, he says, was a “bubble economy”. The bubble made UK output seem larger than it actually was!
Robert Skidelsky December 22 2009
The biggest intermediate-term risk for risk assets is not that the big-V doesn’t unfold,
but that it does, inciting the Fed to bring the extended period of a near-zero policy rate to a close.
But again, you retort, doesn’t that imply that in the absence of the big-V, risk asset prices could levitate into bubble valuation space?
Yes, it does mean that.
Paul McCulley November 2009
In simple terms, the prevailing consensus is to view the post-2007 crisis as the result of an external shock which could not have been anticipated.
In fact, the world’s problems did not come from an external shock but were created within the various economies
Derek Scott, economic adviser to Tony Blair from 1997 to 2003, FT December 22 2009
Monetary Policy and the Housing Bubble
Chairman Ben S. Bernanke
"Some observers have assigned monetary policy a central role in the crisis. Specifically, they claim that excessively easy monetary policy by the Federal Reserve in the first half of the decade helped cause a bubble in house prices"
January 3, 2010
Eurozone credit contraction accelerates
Bank loans and the M3 money supply in the eurozone contracted at an accelerating pace in November, raising the risk that a lending squeeze will choke the region's fragile recovery next year.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 30 Dec 2009
Om det finns något kritiskt att säga om Ben Bernanke så är det att han var blind för finanskrisen – fram till att den inträffade. Under lång tid avfärdade han varningarna om en bubbla på bostadsmarknaden.
I likhet med sin företrädare Alan Greenspan ansåg inte Bernanke att det var centralbankernas sak att bromsa bostadsrallyt.
Peter Wolodarski 2009-12-27
Den som tror att Sverige följer samma ekonomiska tyngdlagar som länder som USA, Storbritannien och Spanien bör förbereda sig på att det smärtsamma prisfallet på bostäder kommer, kanske till och med under 2010.
Peter Wolodarski 2009-12-27
Lars E O Svensson anses vara en av världens ledande akademiker inom området penningpolitik.
Men hans insatser i riksbanksdirektionen för tankarna till en kapten som slaviskt följer sitt sjökort, även om fartyget kört på ett isberg.
Peter Wolodarski 2009-12-27
The Age of Deleveraging
Total consumer debt is shrinking for the first time on 60 years.
And the decline shows no sign of abating.
John Mauldin 19/12 2009
Arvind Subramanian argues that economics has redeemed itself by rescuing the world economy from the crisis. I agree, but only up to a point.
These extraordinary interventions have not returned the patient to health. They have merely prevented him from dying.
We now must heal five chronic conditions, instead of survive last year’s brutal heart attack.
Martin Wolf, December 29 2009
It is exactly 20 years since Japan's Nikkei hit its peak of 38,957.
The index now trades at about quarter of that value. In other words, it has lost about 73%, closing at 10,638 on Tuesday.
BBC 29 December 2009
Mr Greenspan described the new world in 2002:
“The use of a growing array of derivatives and the related application of more sophisticated methods for measuring and managing risk are key factors underpinning the enhanced resilience of our largest financial institutions. As a result, not only have individual financial institutions become less vulnerable to shocks from underlying risk factors, but also the financial system as a whole has become more stable.”
John Kay, FT December 28 2009
Senators John McCain and Maria Cantwell
Lawmakers in both parties, seeking to prevent future financial crises while soothing public anger over bailouts and bonuses, are turning to an approach that’s both simple and transformative:
re-imposing sections of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act that separated commercial and investment banking.
Bloomberg Dec. 28 2009
In 2008, as the global financial crisis unfolded, the reputation of economics as a discipline and economists as useful policy practitioners seemed to be irredeemably sunk. Queen Elizabeth captured the mood when she asked pointedly why no one (in particular economists) had seen the crisis coming.
There was no doubt that, notwithstanding the few Cassandras who correctly prophesied gloom and doom, the profession had failed colossally.
The totemic symbols of this failure were, of course, the two most important policymakers, Alan Greenspan and his successor as chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke. They, among many others, helped create a belief system that elevated markets beyond criticism.
Arvind Subramanian, FT December 27 2009
The realisation that the yawning US current account deficit was increasingly being financed by Asian central banks, with the Chinese moving into pole position, was, for me at least, the eureka moment of the decade.
As I reflected on the rise, and probable fall, of America’s empire, it became clear to me that there were three fatal deficits at the heart of American power
Niall Ferguson December 27 2009
I want to be very, very clear: too big to fail is one of the biggest problems we face in this country, and we must take action to eliminate too big to fail.
Ben Bernanke, Time Person of the Year, December 2009
Bernanke was as clueless as Greenspan about the coming storm. He dismissed warnings of a housing bubble. He insisted that economic fundamentals remained strong.
In March 2007, he assured Congress that "the problems in the subprime market seem likely to be contained."
Time Magazine december 2009
The rest of the world was inclined to believe that the west, whatever its faults, knew what it was doing, particularly where running a market economy was concerned. But then the teacher failed the examination.
Thirty years of surging growth in private sector leverage, in the balance sheets of the financial sector and in notional profitability of the financial sector in the US and other high-income countries has ended in calamity.
The emergence of massive global current account “imbalances” has proved highly destabilising.
Martin Wolf December 23 2009
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz
The U.S. economy must grow at least 3 percent to create enough jobs for new entrants into the labor force
CNBC 21 Dec 2009
Will the dam break in 2007?
Joseph Stiglitz, The Guardian 27/12 2006
The gap between yields on Treasuries and so-called TIPS due in 10 years closed above 2.25 percentage points last week, the longest stretch since August 2008.
That’s the low end of the range in the five years before Lehman Brothers collapsed,
and shows traders expect inflation, not deflation in coming months
Bloomberg Dec. 21 2009
The Great Stabilisation
The Economist print Dec 17th 2009
The Great Moderation
An unusual suspect
Baselkommittén
Dåliga nyheter för SEB, Swedbank, Handelsbanken och Nordea.
De svenska bankerna har väldigt bra kvalitet på sina tillgångar, exempelvis mycket bostadsutlåning.
Men det får man alltså inte tillgodoräkna sig i det nya måttet.
SvD/e24 2009-12-18
After predicting in his 2003 book "The Dollar Crisis" that the U.S. property bubble would trigger a global recession,
Duncan's new book argues that governments will have to keep stimulating their economies because U.S. demand for cheap goods will not return to the halcyon days of the 2003 to 2007 boom.
CNBC december 2009
Ben Bernanke Time Magazine "Person of the Year"
Time magazine famously named Mr. Greenspan, Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers “The Committee to Save the World” — the “Three Marketeers” who “prevented a global meltdown.”
Tim Iacono 16/12 2009
Almost 25% of homeowners, or 10.7 million borrowers, were "underwater" on their mortgages Q3. Another 2.3 million are near that drowning point, where you owe more on your loan than your home is worth.
A basic cost-benefit analysis predicts that these people will abandon their homes and accept foreclosure. But...
CNN december 2009
The European Central Bank will lend banks 96.9 billion euros ($141 billion)
as some financial institutions try to lock in cash at a record low interest rate.
Bloomberg Dec. 16 2009
Will the Federal Reserve's actions to combat the crisis lead to higher inflation down the road?
The answer is no; the Federal Reserve is committed to keeping inflation low and will be able to do so.
Chairman Ben S. Bernanke At the Economic Club of Washington D.C., Washington D.C. December 7, 2009
Deja Vu: Will the U.S. Undergo a Reprise of 1937?
Deflation took hold of the country for another two years and unemployment spiked to 20% and didn't drop below 15% until 1940. Property prices and stock markets languished below their pre-1929 levels until World War II shocked production back to life.
Roubini 16/12 2009
Krugman beskriver världsdepressionen i början av 30-talet som en efterfrågekris:
”Det som satte stopp för trettiotalsdepressionen i USA var ett massivt underskottfinansierat program för offentliga arbeten som kallas andra världskriget”.
Carl Johan Gardell, Understreckare SvD 13 augusti 2009
Former Bank of England policy maker Willem Buiter said Greece may be the first major country in the European Union to default on its debts since the aftermath of World War II.
Bloomberg Dec. 9 2009
This year the housing market /in the US/ showed signs of life.
But with foreclosures and unemployment climbing, prices have further to fall.
CNN Money 8/12 2009
The IEA puts a date on peak oil production - 2020
The Economist print December 10th 2009
Greece defies Europe as EMU crisis turns deadly serious
Euroland's revolt has begun.
Greece has become the first country on the distressed fringes of Europe's monetary union to defy Brussels and reject the Dark Age leech-cure of wage deflation.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 13 Dec 2009
US trade deficit in October $32.9 billion.
Exports $136.8 billion
Imports $169.8 billion.
Bloomberg Dec. 10 2009
Iceland Is Sacrificed to Save EU:
Shame on Britain and Holland
The Brussels Journal, 2009-12-05
Bankers had cashed in before the music stopped
In 2000-07, the top five executives at Bear and Lehman pocketed cash bonuses exceeding $300m and $150m respectively
Lucian Bebchuk, Alma Cohen and Holger Spamann FT December 6 2009
Den produktion av kol och olja som IPCC:s skräckscenarier bygger på över huvud taget inte är möjlig.
Detta kan förvisso lindra oron för klimatet, men å andra sidan måste vi oroa oss desto mer för framtida energibrist
Kjell Aleklett DN Debatt 7/12 2009
Explaining The Drop In Unemployment Rate
Note the drop in the civilian labor force by 98,000.
Moreover, those "not in the labor force" rose by 291,000 constituting nearly all of the decline in unemployment.
Mish 5/12 2009
Jag /Rolf Englund/ tycker det är skriande uppenbart att räntan världen över är för låg och att en större del av stimulanserna borde ske via finanspolitiken. Finanspolitiska Rådets chef Lars Calmfors är inne på liknande tankar:
- Lars Calmfors budskap är: Riksbanken måste agera. Annars hotar en bolånebubbla
Mr Bernanke was appointed by former President George W Bush in 2006, tasked with following the 18-year reign of Mr Greenspan, whom Gordon Brown that year introduced in London as "the man acknowledged to be the world's greatest economic leader of our generation".
BBC 3 December 2009
Mot bakgrund av den kraftigaste recessionen i världsekonomin sedan andra världskriget finns det anledning att se över om den politik som centralbanker bedriver kan utformas för att bättre kunna främja en balanserad ekonomisk utveckling.
Vice riksbankschef Karolina Ekholm 2009-12-04
Bubblan som vägrar spricka
Skenbar stabilitet. Bostadspriserna stiger och skulderna ökar.
Men Riksbanken ser inte det som skäl att höja räntan.
Fokus 30 november 2009 Text: Lotta Engzell-Larsson
Trade imbalances will grow from their current low levels in the months ahead, and this is politically dangerous.
Deficit country economies remain extremely fragile, and even if they avoid a double dip recession their unemployment rates will continue to rise well into next year.
Kevin O'Rourke Eurointelligence 4.12.2009
Dubai and Euroland
What would happen if a member of the euro area could no longer finance its debt?
would default by one euro-zone country threaten the viability of the euro itself?
The Economist print Dec 3rd 2009
Look what I found by accident on my own website!
Posterity will regard the economic performance we are now witnessing as a golden age.
It will also know, although we do not, how long this era lasts.
Martin Wolf, FT, May 2nd 2007
Englund's Q
How come that unemployment is rising when the recession is over?
It is the productivity, Stupid
For employment to rise GDP must increase more than Productivity (P), of course
ΔGDP/ΔP gives a nice Q
Rolf Englund 4/12 2009
The headlines said that initial job-less claims dropped to 466,000
That is a lot of people losing their jobs
Second, the headline number was a seasonally adjusted number.
The actual number was 543,926.
John Mauldin 28/11 2009
Mats Svegfors har i sin betraktelse (98-03-14) i SvD förundrats över att det är så gott om jobb i USA och så ont om jobb i Sverige.
Svegfors äldsta dotter har nämligen haft en utbytesstudent från USA hos sig. Den unga damen har förundrats över att det är så ont om jobb i Sverige, medan det är så gott om jobb i USA.
Svegfors delar denna förundran.
How to take moral hazard out of banking
Niall Ferguson and Laurence Kotlikoff, FT December 2 2009
Bank of America says it plans to repay its $45bn US government bailout
BBC 2 December 2009
Uppenbarligen krävs det mycket mera underlag än vad Roubini hittills har kommit med för att vi skall sätta någon tilltro till hans varningar /om dollarn/ .
Danne Nordling 29/11 2009
Vi är på väg mot en monsterbubbla på finansmarknaden
Det handlar framförallt om spekulation i en allt billigare dollar.
Nouriel Roubini, Ekonomiekot 27/11 2009
2011
Rolf Englund blog 24/11 2009
Bank of England provided almost 62 billion pounds (USD 102.9 billion) in emergency loans
to Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS at the height of the credit crisis last year.
The money was repaid in full by January this year
A spokesman for the prime minister said it was "a powerful reminder" of how the banking system had nearly collapsed.
CNBC and BBC 24 Nov 2009
The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true. But that happy situation, aided by ultralow interest rates, may not last much longer.
An additional $500 billion a year in interest expense would total more than the combined federal budgets this year for education, energy, homeland security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Edmund L. Andrews New York Times 23 Nov 2009
At Lehman, the top five executives received cash bonuses and proceeds from stock sales
totaling $1 billion between 2000 and 2008,
and at Bear, the top five received more than $1.4 billion,
according to Harvard Law School.
CNBC 23 Nov 2009
“It is inherently extraordinarily difficult to know whether an asset’s price is in line with its fundamental value,”
Bernanke said in response to audience questions after a speech in New York.
“It’s not obvious to me in any case that there’s any large misalignments currently in the U.S. financial system.”
Nov. 23 2009 Bloomberg
Could sovereign debt be the new subprime?
Gillian Tett, FT November 22 2009
Either central banks are wrong to keep rates low,
or markets are wrong to expect recovery
The Economist print Nov 19th 2009
About Richard A. Posner, A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression
Were a lot of people reckless and stupid? Of course! But that cannot explain why the whole system crashed, since a lot of people are always reckless and stupid.
The problem, fundamentally, is that markets cannot, and rationally should not, anticipate their own collapse
Jonathan Rauch, NYT, May 14, 2009
We need an orderly way to let institutions fail
Arthur Levitt, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, FT October 8 2009
Residential investment is the best leading indicator for the economy.
Residential investment will not recover rapidly because of the large overhang of existing vacant housing units.
Existing home sales are largely irrelevant for the economy.
CalculatedRisk 18/11 2009
Mortgage loans: Record number are late
Efforts to combat foreclosure plague are falling short as the total number of delinquent mortgage loans hits 9.64%.
Les Christie, CNNMoney November 19, 2009
At some point, American workers will rebel.
US unemployment is already 17.5pc under the broad "U6" gauge followed by Barack Obama.
Realty Track said that 332,000 properties were foreclosed in October alone.
More Americans have lost their homes this year than during the entire decade of the Great Depression.
A backlog of 7m homes is awaiting likely seizure by lenders.
If you are not paying attention to this political time-bomb, perhaps you should.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 15 Nov 2009
As a result of Lehman’s bankruptcy, millions of people have needlessly lost their jobs, hundreds of thousands of homes have been needlessly repossessed and trillions of dollars, pounds and euros have been needlessly added to the debt burdens of governments around the world.
I repeat that word needlessly because most of these losses would not have happened if Lehman had been supported or wound down in an orderly way.
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, September 18, 2009
Why a Lehman deal would not have saved us
Niall Ferguson, FT September 14 2009
In the two years after Silicon Valley's dot-com bubble peaked in August 2000, the US stock market fell
by almost half.
It was not until May 2007 that investors in the Standard & Poor's 500 had recouped their losses.
Then, just three months later, a new financial storm blew up, this time in the credit market... as millions of American households discovered they could not afford to service billions of dollars' worth of subprime mortgages.
Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money
Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke played his part Monday in foreshadowing the dollar’s grim future. He offered the hollow assurance that
the fed was “attentive to the implications of changes in the value of the dollar.”
Such benign neglect whispers the truth: impotence in the face of impending misfortune.
Charles Goyette, author of The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Impending Currency Crisis with Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments.
CNBC 17 Nov 2009
Barack Obama, president of the US, met Hu Jintao, president of the People’s Republic of China,
This, then, was an opportunity for Mr Obama to tell some brutal truths. I hope he did
Martin Wolf, FT November 17 2009
"tro inte att det värsta är över"
Tongångarna från männen som förutspådde finanskrisen,
Nouriel Roubini, Marc Faber och Peter Schiff,
har inte blivit muntrare.
E24 2009-09-30
The headline /Mishkin in FT/ sort of says it all:
"Not all bubbles present a risk to the economy."
That is completely false.
Any genuine bubble poses great risk, which is why they should be avoided, as I have warned repeatedly since at least 1997.
Bill Fleckenstein, MSN Money, 13/11 2009
You have been warned about “the mother of all carry trades.”
Emerging economies “might overheat and experience financial turmoil,”
Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said
Low rates and the dollar’s depreciation present “new, real and insurmountable risks to the recovery of the global economy,”
Liu Mingkang, China’s top banking regulator, said
Bloomberg, Nov. 16 2009
Inflation Tips
Worries about the size of America’s budget deficit and fears about the potential politicisation of the Federal Reserve are rising.
There is a danger that higher headline inflation will be misread, even as rising energy costs sap demand.
Nice chart
The Economist print 12/11 2009
In a guest article,
Robert Lucas rebuts criticisms that
the financial crisis represents a failure of economics
The Economist print, Aug 6th 2009
Our company, J.P. Morgan Chase, employs more than 220,000 people, serves well over 100 million customers, lends hundreds of millions of dollars each day and has operations in nearly 100 countries. And if some unforeseen circumstance should put this firm at risk of collapse, I believe we should be allowed to fail.
Jamie Dimon, Washington Post, November 13, 2009
The monthly trade gap grew to $36.5 billion
The U.S. trade deficit widened in September by an unexpectedly large 18.2 percent,
the most in more than 10 years
A separate report showed non-oil import prices up 0.7 percent.
CNBC/Reuters Friday, 13 Nov 2009
Everyone realizes that the dollar will have to fall to enable the U.S. to export more, since American households will be consuming less.
Barry Eichengreen, Eurointelligence 13.11.2009
Dangerous asset bubbles are developing in emerging Asia and in China in particular.
Barry Eichengreen, Eurointelligence 13.11.2009
Victory in the cold war was a start as well as an ending
In the case of this crisis, the failure lies not so much with the market system as a whole, but with defects in the world’s financial and monetary systems.
Marin Wolf, FT November 10 2009
Nytt guldprisrekord
över 1.121 dollar per uns
Hittills i år + 27 procent
DI 2009-11-12
Finansmannen Tomas Fischer starkt kritisk till Riksbankens guldutförsäljning
"Sverige förlorar miljarder på att sälja sitt guld"
Dagens Industri 29/5 2007
China Signals That It May Allow Currency to Rise Against Dollar
CNBC/Reuters, 11 Nov 2009
Why will the dollar be the first of today’s fiat currencies to collapse? dollarcollapse.com
Investors should shun U.S. government bonds
former Bank of England policy maker Willem Buiter said.
Bloomberg Nov. 10 2009
Not all bubbles present a risk to the economy
Frederic Mishkin, FT November 9 2009
I Finansinspektionens senaste stresstester kommer de fyra storbankerna att få kreditförluster på sammantaget cirka 175 miljarder kronor under perioden fjärde kvartalet 2009 till 2012.
Swedbank väntas gå med förlust 2010
DI 2009-11-10
Trots att arbetslösheten stiger och svensk ekonomi krymper med fem procent – det största fallet på flera decennier – så växer hushållens bolån med över åtta procent i årstakt.
En rekordstor andel av hushållen väljer också att ta lån med rörlig ränta.
Finansinspektionens generaldirektör Martin Andersson och chefsekonomen Lars Frisell
DN Debatt 10/11 2009
Eurons växelkurs har nått smärttröskeln för industrin i euroområdet.
Det är dåliga nyheter för tillväxten i hela Europa.
Det sade ordföranden för den europeiska företagarorganisationen Business Europe Jürgen Thumann
i ett uttalande på måndagen i samband med ett EU-möte om arbetsmarknaden.
DI 2009-11-09
Bostadspriserna är en av de mer allvarliga riskerna mot svensk ekonomi i ett medelfristigt perspektiv.
Men att vidta åtgärder för att dämpa stigande bostadspriser ligger inte i närtid för regeringen.
Anders Borg, 2009-11-04
Why a Lehman deal would not have saved us
Niall Ferguson, FT September 14 2009
De svenska bolånekunderna får betala storbankernas svarta hål i öst.
På hemmaplan har både SEB och Swedbank bättrat på sina vinstmarginaler på utlåningen.
"Man måste i viss mån förstå att bankerna anpassat sina marginaler med tanke på de ökade riskerna i utlåningen", säger finansmarknadsminister Mats Odell
DI/TT 2009-10-21
Den lettiska centralbanken genomförde stödköp av den egna valutan, lats,
för sammanlagt 16,7 miljoner euro (cirka 175 miljoner kronor) i förra veckan.
TT/DI 2009-11-02
The price of oil has reached a new high for 2009,
continuing its recent rise on the back of the weak US dollar and strong US company results.
US crude rose 52 cents to $79.05
BBC 19 October 2009
Whatever happened to imbalances?
Samuel Brittan, FT October 15 2009
15 miljoner arbetslösa i Euroland
BBC 30/10 2009
Finansmannen Tomas Fischer drev på affären där ålandsbanken köpte Kaupthing Bank.
Men det är Fischers vän, eller kanske före detta vän, Lage Jonason, som lagt rabarber på hela provisionen på 15 miljoner kronor
DI 28/10 2009
Efter kraschen i isländska Kaupthing sydde Tomas Fischer ihop en affär där ålandsbanken köpte Kaupthing Bank Sverige. Under processens gång fanns representanter för bolagen samt Lage Jonason på bankirfirman Lage med och affären blev verklighet i februari i år.
Men Tomas Fischer har inte sett till en krona av provisionen på 15 miljoner kronor och går nu till domstol för att få pengar av Lage Jonason
"Det är väldigt tråkigt. Det är kanske mer principen det handlar om än pengarna. Jag kan klara mig utan pengarna, men man gör inte så här", säger Fischer till DI.
Full text
Tomas Fischer
Lage Jonason
Om hushållens upplåning fortsätter att öka med 8 procent är det inte riktigt hållbart", säger SEB:s chefsekonom Robert Bergqvist.
Det är Statistiska centralbyråns, SCB:s, senaste finansmarknadsstatistik som ser ut som om Riksbanken misslyckats totalt i sin räntepolitik.
Tanken var ju att garantera företagen billiga lån för att få igång investeringarna och skapa nya jobb.
DI 27/10 2009
As the US, UK and Japan will be trying to borrow the same buck in international markets, bond yields will rise when QE stops and there is an even modest recovery in credit demand from the private sector.
That alone is enough to prevent the development of a new credit bubble similar to those that have been economic drivers for nearly two decades.
David Roche, FT October 26 2009
Dollarn på sin hittills lägsta nivå mot kronan på över ett år.
Dollarkursen har fallit med 28 procent sedan toppnoteringen 9,30 i mars
och är sammanlagt ned med 14,5 procent under 2009.
DI 26/10 2009
Full text
Dollarn
"The euro at $1.50 is a disaster for the European economy and industry,"
said Henri Guaino, right-hand man of President Nicolas Sarkozy.
French finance minister Christine Lagarde said it was intolerable that Europe
should "pay the price" for a dysfunctional link between the US and China.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 20 Oct 2009
Släpp valutan fri
Den lettiska regeringen har svårigheter med att uppfylla omvärldens lånekrav.
Om valutan tilläts flyta skulle den ekonomiska återhämtningen gå fortare.
Så skedde i Sverige i början på nittiotalet.
Efter ett fåfängt och dyrt försvar av kronan släpptes valutan fri.
DN huvudledare, 6/10 2009
Europe’s plot to take over the world
the G20 is Europe’s Trojan horse
Gideon Rachman, FT, October 5, 2009
Multiplying multipliers
Mark Thoma, Menzie Chinn, and The Economist all have posts on the question of the size of the fiscal multiplier.
Paul Kruman, October 1, 2009
The US Job Numbers for September
263,000 more jobs lost in September, and unemployment now at 9.8 percent
The only reason the numbers don't look worse is that 571,000 workers dropped out of the labor force.
Remember that the economy needs about 125,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with a growing population.
Robert Reich 2/10 2009
Why the Dow is Hitting 10,000 When Consumers Can't Buy And Business Cries "Socialism"
Robert Reich 22/9 2009
The Keynes comeback
A trio of new books celebrate the man and declare victory for his ideas
“This present crisis is a crisis of systemic ignorance not asymmetric information.”
The Economist print Oct 1st 2009
RE: Njaa, hur är det med ECB?
Vice riksbankschef Lars E O Svensson om vilka lärdomar man kan dra av finanskrisen och inflationsmålspolitiken.
Han inleder med att konstatera att alla centralbanker med inflationsmål har detta som ett flexibelt mål som också går ut på att stabilisera realekonomin.
Detta till skillnad mot en strikt inflationsmålspolitik där enbart inflationen skall stabiliseras.
Danne Nordling 25/9 2009
Vice riksbankchefen ser ingen bobubbla
"Frågan är om det /den låga räntan/ leder till att priserna på bostadsmarknaden stiger på ett orimligt sätt.
Vi ser inga tecken på det idag"
Dagens Industri 2009-09-25
Despite the price falls of the past two years
In Britain house prices remain 170% higher than they were in 1997,
but average earnings have risen by only 55% in the same period.
Steep declines in affordability have also taken place in Ireland, Spain and Australia.
The Economist 19/9 2009
Bostadsmarknaden blomstrar igen.
Priserna rusar och ROT-rabatterade hantverkare monterar upp italienskt kakel
på löpande band i de svenska hemmen.
Det är bara ett problem. Det pyramidspelsliknande bostadsbytandet låser in kapital
och hushållens skulder växer.
Dick Klang, Timbro och Barbro Engman,
ordförande Hyresgästföreningen, SvD Brännpunkt 16/9 2009
Western economies have woken up with a hangover from a drunken binge of
excess consumption and leverage that was reckless and irresponsible
Central banks “were empowered as the ultimate whistle-blowers in a financial system
and they failed, utterly failed to do their job
in this period of excess”.
Stephen Roach,
chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia,CNBC, 16 Sep 2009
The U.S. current-account deficit narrowed in the second quarter
to $98.8 billion, the least since 2001
Bloomberg Sept. 16 2009
The gap between US imports and exports grew 16 percent, in July
the most in more than a decade, to $32 billion
from a revised $27.5 billion in June that was larger than previously estimated
Bloomberg 10/9 2009
Boom, Bust and Blame
The Inside Story about America's Economic Crisis
CNBC, September 2009
Why it is still too early to start withdrawing stimulus
Two groups of thinkers reject this viewpoint.
One argues that the economy is always in equilibrium.
Both the guilty and the innocent must suffer
Martin Wolf, FT September 8 2009
Financial crises are all different, but they have one fundamental source
That is the unquenchable capability of human beings when confronted with
long periods of prosperity to presume that it will continue.
Alan Greenspan, BBC 8 September 2009
U.S. Economy Lost 216,000 Jobs in August
after falling by a revised 276,000 in July and 463,000 in June.
Total loss of jobs since the recession began in December 2007 - 6.9 million.
(Remember, it takes 150,000 jobs per month (or so) simply to maintain
the employment rate, due to growth in the population.)
RGE Monitor 2009-09-07
It would, I believe, be an error of historic proportions if we were to repeat the mistakes of the 1930s
- when premature tightening prolonged the great depression
- or if we failed to learn the lessons from Japan’s experience of stagnation in the 1990s.
The Prime Minister Gordon Brown, speech to G20 Finance Ministers in London on 5 September 2009, ahead of the Pittsburgh Summit.
Både penningpolitiken och finanspolitiken bör vara expansiv under både 2009 och 2010.
Det sa finansminister Anders Borg vid en presskonferens på fredagen inför G20-mötet för finansministrar.
"Vad gäller ekonomin så står vi fortfarande i askan, och det är inte rätt tid att kalla tillbaka brandkåren.
Jag tycker det är rimligt att under både 2009 och 2010 behålla en expansiv penningpolitik och finanspolitik"
Anders Borg, DI 2009-09-04
How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?
“central problem of depression-prevention has been solved,” declared Robert Lucas of the University of Chicago
in his 2003 presidential address to the American Economic Association
Paul Kruman, New York Times Magazine, 2/9 2009
There was a common ingredient in most /Bank/ failures:
an over-reliance on wholesale borrowing.
As the Western banking system has expanded over the past two decades
its assets have grown to about 2.5 times its deposits
The Economist print, September 3rd 2009
Most new borrowing during America’s housing boom was for spending
Almost all of the $1.45 trillion the authors estimate was borrowed against rising home equity was used for spending.
The Economist print, September 3rd 2009
Hushållens totala skulder hos bankerna ökade med 14 miljarder under juli,
nästan hela ökningen är bostadslån. Den årliga ökningstakten var i juli 7,9 procent.
Finansinspektionen 2009-08-31
Swedbank garanterad nysemission om 15 miljarder kronor
Folksam Liv och Folksam Sak har var för sig beslutat garantera 2 miljarder kronor
DI 2009-08-17
Krugman beskriver världsdepressionen i början av 30-talet som en efterfrågekris:
”Det som satte stopp för trettiotalsdepressionen i USA var ett massivt underskottfinansierat program för offentliga arbeten som kallas andra världskriget”.
Carl Johan Gardell, Understreckare SvD 13 augusti 2009
Betrakta kurvan härintill.
Det är inte den som brukar publiceras i samband med nyheter om tillväxten, men det är den som visar hur värdet av Sveriges varor och tjänster utvecklats i fasta priser sedan 1950.
Som synes har Sveriges välstånd ökat kraftigt.
Man kan här läsa ut att Sverige med det värsta scenariot, drygt sex procents negativ tillväxt i år,
kommer att backa till ungefär 2005 års nivå innan det vänder upp igen. Fattigare än så blir vi inte.
Anders Bolling, DN 2009-08-10
Roosevelts New Deal på 30-talet gick ut på att med höjda inkomstskatter och utgiftsminskningar få balans i budgeten, som till slut uppnåddes 1938.
Då bröts uppgången och produktionen sjönk.
Först när balansmålet övergavs kunde ekonomin expandera tillräckligt mycket.
Danne Nordling, 20/2 2009
The crisis and its impact on pension plans have focused attention on the baby boomers,
typically 20-25 per cent of the populations of western economies,
who are now starting to head off into retirement.
George Magnus, FT August 13 2009
Leaving a financial crisis is like leaving an awkward social gathering: a good exit is essential.
In 1936-37, the Federal Reserve made a colossal mistake in its “exit strategy”.
Randall Kroszner, FT August 11 2009
Om lönepengar och lånepengar
Rolf Englund 2009-08-12
Arbetslösheten fortsätter att öka men det ekonomiska läget har blivit "ett par snäpp bättre".
Det finns därför ett visst utrymme för satsningar i höstens budget.
Anders Borg, E24 2009-08-06
Huru tänker Anders Borg?
Rolf Englund 2009-08-12
Teorin om automatiska stabilisatorer förutsätter att kommunerna inte skall avskeda eller höja skatten.
Därför måste staten stabilisera kommunerna.
Men detta tycks inte vara motivet för att nu ge extra pengar till kommunerna.
Man kan dela in stabiliseringspolitiken i tre kategorier: automatisk, reaktiv och proaktiv.
Danne Nordling 11/8 2009
We are in the process of deleveraging
the most leveraged economy in history.
Of course, if the U.S. doesn't recover there will be no worldwide recovery
We, however, don't believe that the U.S. massive stimulus programs and money printing can solve
a problem of excess debt generation that resulted from greed and living way beyond our means.
Comstockfunds, August 6, 2009
Keynes: The Return of the Master
“Why did no one see the crisis coming?”, Queen Elizabeth asked
A seminar at the British Academy tried to answer and the FT has taken up the discussion.
Robert Skidelsky, FT, August 5 2009
On a visit to the London School of Economics last November, the Queen asked why no one saw the financial crisis coming.
For if people with enough authority and influence had foreseen it, some preventive action would have been taken and either the crisis would not have occurred, or it would at least have taken a different form.
Samuel Brittan, FT, August 6 2009
Prices in the $3.5 tn U.S. commercial real estate have fallen about 39% from the peak in mid 2007
The 39% drop in commercial real estate prices has already eclipsed the 27% decrease during the S&L crisis of the late '80s to early '90s.
Elizabeth MacDonald, Fox, August 5, 2009
China’s central bank warned that its counterparts in developed nations face difficult choices
as monetary easing threatens to cause “severe” inflation and exchange-rate volatility.
“Failure to manage the degree of easing may lead to concerns about mid- and long-term inflation and exchange-rate stability,”
the People’s Bank of China said in a quarterly monetary policy report, posted on its Web site today.
Bloomberg August 5 2009
The U.S. Treasury Department plans to ramp up sales of inflation-protected bonds
China, the largest holder of U.S. government debt, is among investors that have indicated they want to buy more of the securities
Also: Link to nice slideshow about the Biggest Holders of US Gov't Debt, such as Luxembourg, Russia, Brazil,
Caribbean Banking Centers (Bahamas, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Netherlands Antilles, Panama and the British Virgin Islands),
Oil Exporters, Japan, China (Mainland)and Federal Reserve and US Intragovernmental Holdings (That’s right, the biggest holder of US government debt is the United States itself. The Federal Reserve system of banks and other US intragovernmental holdings account for a stunning $4.806 trillion in US Treasury debt.
CNBC/Reuters 5 Aug 2009
I recently had the pleasure of reading Justin Fox’s new book The Myth of the Rational Market.
It offers an engaging history of the research that has come to be called the “efficient market hypothesis”.
It is similar in style to the classic by the late Peter Bernstein, Against the Gods.
Richard Thaler, FT, August 4 2009
Despite the region’s small size, the intensifying crisis in the Baltics cannot be treated as a freakish local squall of little concern to outsiders.
Bank failures or plunging currencies in the three Baltic nations – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – could threaten the fragile prospect of recovery in the rest of Europe.
These countries also sit on one of the world’s most sensitive political fault-lines.
They are the European Union’s frontier states, bordering Russia.
Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, August 3 2009
Amelia Earhart, the world's most famous female aviator, became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic in 1928.
Unfortunately, her Lockheed Electra disappeared over the Pacific
Amelia's story has much in common with Alan Greenspan's latter years at the helm of the Federal Reserve.
The serial bubble-blower appeared to lose his compass and the subsequent hard landing in uncharted territories
Irish Times, July 24, 2009
“Why did no one see the crisis coming?” Queen Elizabeth asked last year.
If the economics profession could not warn the public about the credit crunch and the recession,
what is the profession’s raison d’etre?
FT writers and outside experts will set out their views in the posts below.
July 28, 2009 by FT
Before 2007, independent central banks would have had no problem presenting credible exit strategies. They would have pointed to their inflation target, and how they would use their medium-term inflation forecast or some other analytical framework to ensure that the price level would remain on a stable trajectory.
Wolfgang Münchau, FT July 26 2009
Being too big, too interconnected, too complex and too international to fail is a big business asset.
The too-big-to-fail problem has been central to the degeneration and corruption of the financial system in the north Atlantic region over the past two decades.
Willem Buiter, June 26 2009
"Too big to fail is a terrible situation and we've got to fix that"
more laws were needed to permit government to wind down failing "financial behemoths" in a transparent manner
Ben Bernanke BBC 27/7 2009
Låga räntor och räddningsaktioner för banker och storföretag
uppmuntrar till samma huvudlösa risktagande som ledde till den värsta finanskrisen sedan 1930-talet
Johan Norberg, DN Debatt 2009-07-25
On March 14, 2008, Robert Rubin spoke at a session at the Brookings Institution in Washington, stating that "few, if any people anticipated the sort of meltdown that we are seeing in the credit markets at present”.
Rubin is a former US Treasury Secretary, member of the top management team at Citigroup bank and one of the top Democratic Party policy advisers.
“No One Saw This Coming” Understanding Financial Crisis Through Accounting Models
Dirk J Bezemer, University of Groningen, 16 June 2009
An Englishman doesn't have to own his castle
We should all learn our lesson from the house-price bubble
Government must reshape the tax system so that it does not favour home ownership
Edmund Conway, 24 June 2009
Göran Persson visar runt på sitt älskade Torp,
den 370-hektarsgård som enligt vissa kostade Socialdemokraterna valsegern 2006.
Den förre statsministern lägger också ut texten om sitt nya privata bolag, livet som bonde och dagens mesiga politiker.
DI 2009-07-18
Most people wonder how the financial crisis will end. For some, the story of how it began is just as important.
Control of that tale will help determine how we respond to the past two years of market mayhem.
At stake is the financial industry’s business model and billions of dollars in annual profits.
Bloomberg July 8 2009
Rebalancing global growth
Before the financial crash, global demand was horribly skewed. It was far too reliant on spending from increasingly indebted American consumers:
witness the country’s gaping current-account deficit, which reached almost 6% of GDP in 2006.
The Economist print July 23rd 2009
John Taylor has a message for economists who say Ben S. Bernanke is ignoring a benchmark guide
for interest rates: They’re wrong.
Taylor should know: He wrote the rule.
Bloomberg July 24 2009
Forty years ago, the psychiatrist Elizabeth Kübler-Ross identified the five stages of grief following a traumatic event:
denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.
In my own struggle to come to terms with last year's banking crisis – a personal trauma for every taxpayer – I have so far experienced only anger and depression.
This week, however, I have regressed to anger, and I sense I am not alone.
Tracy Corrigan, 16 July 2009
Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research said the eurozone money figures are "horrifying" and portend a serious crunch ahead.
"My verdict is that the senior people in the ECB [and the Fed] have little organised understanding of the debt-deflationary processes initiated in late 2008," he said.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 12 July 2009
Hur vi en dag ska ta oss från lågränteträsket till en lite mer sund räntesättning förstår jag inte.
Det gör ingen annan heller och det börjar väl bli några av oss som undrar hur exit-strategin bland
”stora tänkare” som Ben Bernanke eller Lars E O Svensson egentligen ser ut.
Pekka Kääntä, 2 juli 2009
Top
Riksbanken har inklusive dagens SEK-auktion med fast ränta lånat ut 303 miljarder kronor
och 17,8 miljarder dollar.
Omräknat till dagens valutakurs har Riksbanken totalt lånat ut 500 miljarder kronor
Riksbanken 2009-07-13
The efficient-markets hypothesis
Of all the economic bubbles that have been pricked, few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself.
Paul Krugman argued that much of the past 30 years of macroeconomics was
“spectacularly useless at best, and positively harmful at worst.”
The Economist print July 16th 2009
The worst FEAR is that the inevitable Debt Collapse that I have been warning you all about is about to take place and it works something like this:
On the way up, the FED deposits $100 in the Banking system which is then able to lend up to (assuming a 10% reserve requirement) $1,000, thus creating $900 out of thin air (all the while creating an illusion that real money was being created).
Now here comes the problem: Eventually something happens that wakes everyone up to the illusion that the Emperor Has No Clothes. When a borrower defaults on $100, it is the same as the FED taking back their initial $100 thus forcing the Banking system to call in $900 worth of loans.
Aubie Baltin 6/8 2007
Top
In search of a Goldilocks exit strategy
Exit strategies, in other words: when and how will economic policy return to normality?
Jean Pisani Ferry, 16/7 2009
The Fed did not see the crisis coming
The list of dogs that did not bark is a long and distinguished one.
Maverecon: Willem Buiter, FT, July 17, 2009
Swedbank drabbades under andra kvartalet av kreditförluster på 6,7 miljarder kronor.
"Marknaden hade räknat med en betydligt lägre siffra, 6,1 miljarder kronor".
Rörelseresultatet förlust på 1,8 miljarder kronor, mot förväntade minus 1,3.
DI 2009-07-17
Riksbankens erbjudande att låna ut 100 miljarder kronor till de svenska storbankerna mottogs med stort intresse
Räntan fastställdes räntan till 0,45 procent
Leif Petersen E24 2009-07-14
Top
Många bedömare anser att amerikanska myndigheter gjorde ett misstag när man lät Lehman Brothers gå i konkurs förra hösten.
Pehr G Gyllenhammar, vice ordförande i Rothschild Europe, inte lika säker.
DI 2009-07-15
We have two options. The first is to deflate debt, the other is to inflate assets
The core of the problem, the unavoidable truth, is that our economic system is laden with debt,
about triple the amount relative to gross domestic product that we had in the 1980s.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Mark Spitznagel, FT July 13 2009
Five golden rules for regulating the banks
Mark-to-market - If there is a contest between shareholder transparency and financial stability, stability must win
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times July 9, 2009
Top
Make Sure You Get This One Right
Are we facing a deflationary spiral or will the monetary
and fiscal stimulus ultimately create (hyper) inflation?
By Niels C. Jensen, at John Mauldin, 7/6 2009
Top
Finanskrisen beror på fem olika faktorer.
Danne Nordling 11/7 2009
The $6,000bn dollar question for the wider financial system.
After all, it was a turn in the US property market that triggered the financial crisis.
And while many other financial disasters have since followed,
the state of the US property market remains crucial to the banking world as a whole.
Gillian Tett, FT July 9 2009
As Summers puts it, “The global imbalances have to add up to zero and so, if the US is going to be less the consumer importer of last resort, then other countries are going to need to be in different positions as well.”
Obama’s most important international assignment may turn out to be coaxing the rest of the world into accommodating this reshaping of the US economy.
Chrystia Freeland, FT July 10 2009
Top
Can the deleveraging process be stopped through fiscal interventions?
Michael Pomerleano, FT July 10, 2009
The U.S. trade deficit in May decreased to $26 bn ,
the smallest deficit since November 1999
Bloomberg July 10 2009
Top
A well-known historian called upon economists to abandon the gods of their profession.
If only there were still such gods. There are not even clearly defined schools of thought.
A typical discussion will consist of a series of overlapping points of view, leaving the innocent listener at best “confused at a higher level”.
What follows is an attempt to outline the main issues.
Samuel Brittan, FT July 9 2009
Anders Borgs plan för balans i EU-ekonomin
Mats Hallgren, Svde24 2009-07-07
Top
ECB-chefen Trichet skämtar:
"It is extremely important that the US has been saying that a strong dollar is in the interests of the US."
Rolf Englund 7/7 2009
Lars Christensen, chefsekonom på Danske Bank, blev bespottad och utbuad när han på ett tidigt stadium varnade för en baltisk krasch.
Torbjörn Becker, chef på institutet för tillväxtekonomi vid Handelshögskolan i Stockholm, betonade på att det inte är staten utan hushåll och företag som skuldsatt sig grovt.
Skevheterna uppstod när letter under 15 procents inflation fick låna euro till 7 procents ränta.
"Hushåll fick betalt för att låna i euro, i reala termer", sa Torbjörn Becker och förordade att Lettland släpper sin valutakoppling till euron
DI 2009-07-02
Top
"Vi är själva med om att skapa nästa kris med de nuvarande låga räntorna", varnar Bengt Dennis.
Greenspans lågräntepolicypekas återigen ut som syndabock till finanskrisen, bland annat av Lars Jonung
DI 2009-07-01
Full text
Top
Our economy’s lights, if not switched off in a rehash of the 1930s Depression, have certainly been dimmed in a 21st century version likely to be labelled the Great Recession.
McHouses, McHummers, and McFlatscreens, all financed with excessive amounts of McCredit created under the mistaken assumption that the asset prices securitising them could never go down.
There is a developing optimism that we can go back to the lifestyle of yesteryear.
Forecasts based on econometric models inevitably miss these secular/structural breaks in historical patterns because it is impossible to quantify human behaviour
Bill Gross, July 2009
It could be that future generations of German politicians find ingenious ways around the balanced budget law.
Or that they find a two-thirds majority to overturn it.
Or that Mr Sarkozy or his successors follow Germany into a future of austerity.
But as long as one of those three events fails to happen, Germany may discover that unilateral fiscal rigour in a monetary union could prove extremely costly.
For the sustainability of the euro, you surely do not want to get into a position where a large member state has a rational economic reason to quit.
So if Germany and France really do what they both promise,
you may as well start the egg timer.
Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times June 28 2009
"Nu vänder det"
Världsekonomin är nära botten, spår OECD
Svensk BNP rasar med 5,5 procent i år.
Abetslösheten fortsätter att stiga och landar på 11,4 procent nästa år /valåret 2010/.
DI 24/6 2009
In contemporary banks, leverage of 30 to one is normal.
Higher leverage is not rare.
Reform of regulation has to start by altering incentives
Banks central activity is creating and trading assets of uncertain value, while their liabilities are, as we have been reminded, guaranteed by the state.
This is a licence to gamble with taxpayers’ money. The mystery is that crises erupt so rarely.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, June 23 2009
Wickman, Wickman, Wibble, Novemberrevolutionen och CMBS
Riksbanken har ett väl rotat institutionellt minne av bankkrisen på 1990-talet
som i mångt och mycket var en fastighetskris.
Vice riksbankschef Barbro Wickman-Parak 2009-06-17
Banken tjänar mer nu än före krisen på sin utlåning till bostäder.
– Vi kan konstatera att boräntemarginalerna har kommit upp.
Om marginalerna var för låga tidigare, så är de för höga nu.
Nordeas vd Christian Clausen, DN 2009-06-22
Investors are kicking themselves for failing to spot the twin bubbles in the stock and housing markets
when the laws of economic gravity for both became spectacularly unhinged.
Now, America should be on red alert for another bubble that's destined to pop
-- outrageously overpriced government bonds, the flipside being outrageously low interest rates.
Fortune Shawn Tully, editor at large June 19, 2009
Den 2/6 2009 skrev Carl-Johan Westholm under rubriken "Politiskt inkorrekt av Reinfeldt och Borg"
ett hyllningsinlägg på sin blog Stateblind.
Rolf Englund blog 22/6 2009
Government debts are both unsustainable and desirable
Government debts today is a natural consequence of the unsustainable
debt explosion in the private sector during the last ten years
Paul de Grauwe, Eurointelligence 18/6 2009
Excellent article
Is this the death of the dollar?
Edmund Conway, Daily Telegraph 20 June 2009
The recovery from the Depression is often described as slow
because America did not return to full employment until after the outbreak of the second world war. But...
Christina Romer, chairwoman of Barack Obama's Council of Economic Advisers and a scholar of the Depression,
The Economist print June 18th 2009
Sustained recovery requires decreased domestic US spending and
increased domestic spending in China and much of the rest of the world,
together with adjustments in exchange rates.
Olivier Blanchard, Financial Times, June 18 2009
The writer is chief economist of the IMF
The collapse of Lehman Brothers has shown the havoc that can ensue when large, interconnected banks implode.
Quite apart from the fact that the world is littered with banks which are too big to fail (but too costly to keep saving),
the world also has banks that are too big to manage.
Gillian Tett, Financial Times June 18 2009
The Myth Of the Rational Market
Stocks fell off what Irving Fisher had called a "permanently high plateau" in October 1929
and didn't return until that level until 1954.
Justin Fox, Time, June 22, 2009
Everybody who bought real estate did it with somebody else's money
These guys actually believed that if they bought that house they would make $3 million over the next ten years.
Peter Schiff 16/6 2009
Inte nog med att en släpphänt reglering och intern styrning förorsakat två inhemska finanskriser på 15 år,
nu har bankerna dessutom lyckats med att mer eller mindre konkursa några av våra grannländer.
Anders Borg, var tog din kritik mot bankernas otyg vägen? Och hur ser åtgärdslistan ut?
är det rimligt att trygga, svenska bolånetagare än en gång ska stå för slantarna?
Pekka Kääntä, 18/6 2009 (med länkar)
Lithuania rules out devaluation
“It’s clear that we are suffering a bit more because of our currency board arrangement tying the litas to the euro, but devaluation is not an option,”
Andrius Kubilius, prime minister
Financial Times June 18 2009
Why Bernanke Is Right to Be Worried
Originally published on ft.com on 3 June 2009
Mohamed El-Erian 3 June 2009
Most rational investors accept the dual proposition that
a Fed funds rate pinned against zero and near-$800 billion of excess reserves sloshing around the banking system are not enduringly sustainable.
This is the case despite the fact that most – though a smaller most – applaud the Fed for engineering these outcomes, so as to cut off the fat tail risk of deflationary Armageddon.
Paul McCulley, June 2009
Dollar Again Substantially Overvalued
"principally though not exclusively, against the Chinese renminbi and some other Asian currencies"
requires substantial dollar depreciation as well as a few others like the Swedish krona and the Swiss franc.
Peterson Institute for International Economics June 3, 2009
What gave the Great Depression its name was a brutal decline over three years.
This time the world is applying the lessons taken from that event by John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman, the two most influential economists of the 20th century.
The policy response suggests that the disaster will not be repeated.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, June 16 2009
With the backing of the International Monetary Fund and the European Union,
Riga is hoping that if it can impose enough pain on the domestic economy,
it will be able to maintain its exchange rate peg to the euro.
That would allow it entry into the single currency zone within the next four years.
Financial Times 16/6 2009
The U.S. current account deficit
shrank in the first quarter to $101.5 billion, the smallest deficit since the fourth quarter of 2001
Reuters 17/6 2009
Underskottet i den amerikanska bytesbalansen uppgick under första kvartalet till 101,5 miljarder dollar.
Analytiker hade räknat med ett underskott på 85,0 miljarder dollar, enligt Bloomberg News snittprognos.
DI 2009-06-17
Beröm om boken "Finanskrisen" av Johan Lybeck
Rolf Englund 17/6 2009
Början på sidan - Top of page
Socialismen har genom finanskrisen och klimathotet fått två gratischanser att visa att den lever och att dess praktik borde vara adekvat att tillämpa mot båda. Men ingenting hörs.
Inte ens Göran Greider har längre något konstruktivt att säga om socialismen. Den måste vara död.
Danne Nordling 15/6 2009
Top
The ECB estimated bank writedowns total of $649 billion,
with an estimated $366 billion already announced.
CNBC Reuters 15 Jun 2009
Latvia - IMF experts were overruled by Brussels
Contrary to revisionist talk, Argentina was not a basket case.
Its imbalances were no worse than those of the Baltics, Balkans, Spain, or Greece, and arguably better.
The denouement sequence is worth rehearsing since it offers a crude guide for those with euro pegs in Eastern Europe,
and ultimately perhaps for Club Med inside EMU.
The explosive power of this broad group dwarfs Argentina.
Ambrose-Evans Pritchard, Daily Telegraph 14 Jun 2009
Top
For 30 years or so Keynesianism ruled
The new assault was led by Milton Friedman and followed up by a galaxy of clever young disciples
Adaptive Expectations, Rational Expectations, Real Business Cycle Theory, Efficient Financial Market Theory – they all poured off the Chicago assembly line, their inventors awarded Nobel Prizes
Then along came the almost Great Depression of today
Robert Skidelsky, Financial Times June 9 2009
Början på sidan - Top of page
Barbro Hedvall fundamentalist om EMU
Rolf Englund 2009-06-14
$375 billion - It seems unfair. This was supposed to be a US crisis.
And now it turns out that the real banking mess is still coming for the eurozone
Adam S. Posen, Eurointelligence 5/6 2009
Most people think of the Great Depression as originating in the stock market crash of 1929.
But Nobel Prize-winning economist Vernon Smith's research indicates that the 1929 crash was itself
the result of an earlier collapse in the boom housing market during the Roaring '20s.
The Bellingham Herald, 5/6 2009
Top
Lettland
Den svenska regeringen tycks mest oroa sig för SEB:s och Swedbanks väl och ve.
Om bankerna inte klarar en lettisk devalvering och inta kan få ägarna att skjuta till nya pengar så får vi väl helt enkelt ta och förstatliga dem, rekonstruera och sälja dem vidare med god förtjänst om några år.
Det är inte marknadsekonomins undergång att två på vissa sätt illa skötta banker går i sank, snarare tvärtom.
Pekka Kääntä VA blog 10/6 2009
”När musiken tystnar – en rapport om den globala finanskrisen”.
beskriver krisens förlopp och orsaker, men anger också vilka principer som bör gälla för en ny regleringsmodell.
Ola Pettersson, LO-ekonom 2009-06-10
Början på sidan - Top of page
Kronan är en dyrbar lyx.
Omvärlden backar upp Sverige och Sverige backar upp Baltikum.
även om Lettland fortsätter sin svältkur kommer förlusterna att bli mycket stora.
Barbro Hedvall, Signerat DN 2009-06-12
Beräkningar från IMF och ett antal kreditvärderingsinstitut pekar mot att
de svenska utgifterna kan bli lika stora som under 1990-talskrisen.
Bo Lundgren avfärdar dessa beräkningar som "överslag".
Affärsvärlden 2009-06-12
Top
Credit default swaps are "instruments of destruction" that should be outlawed
George Soros CNBC 12 Jun 2009
Början på sidan - Top of page
Carl Bildt vill lägga ned det svenska generalkonsulatet i New York.
Det vore bättre affär att söka lämpliga New York-advokater som mot vinstandel är beredda att
väcka talan mot amerikanska staten med krav på skadestånd för »gross negligence« i Lehman-konkursen.
Tomas Fischer, Fokus 12 juni 2009
Top
Letting the banks out of Tarp at this point was premature. Supposedly weaned off public support, the 10 had to demonstrate they could raise funds without government guarantees. The temporary liquidity guarantee programme, however, remains available to them.
In effect subsidised by the government, but freed from Tarp rules on compensation and hiring, they can poach both staff and business from competitors still in Tarp.
This is more regulatory discrimination than it is restitution of market discipline.
Financial Times, editorial June 10 2009
Sluta dalta med krisbankerna
Svajande storbanker hålls under armarna med hjälp av statliga insatser, läs subventioner,
där staten och skattebetalarna bär en allt större del av riskerna utan att få eller ta betalt.
Per Lindvall e24.se 2009-06-10
Början på sidan - Top of page
Bo Lundgren, som ledde Bildtregeringens insatser för bankerna och nu på Riksgälden administrerar upprepningen, har som "Mr Fix It" turnerat världen runt med denna framgångssaga.
Men det finns skäl att kika närmare på uträkningen... Det allmänna tog på sig kursförluster på omkring 95 miljarder.
Men också bortsett från allt detta är kalkylen missvisande.
Mikael Nyberg, Flamman 11/6 2009
Top
Andrum för Lettland - men behovet av devalvering kvar
Det finns skäl för även Estland och Litauen att släppa nuvarande euroanknytning och i stället hitta en rimlig växelkurs.
Johan Schück, DN Ekonomi 12/6 2009
Latvia’s currency crisis is a rerun of Argentina’s
Devaluation seems unavoidable
Nouriel Roubini, Financial Times, June 10 2009
Början på sidan - Top of page
Mer än hälften av de lettiskt ägda bankernas inlåning är i utländsk valuta medan aktiekapitalet är i lettiska lat.
Skulle Lettland devalvera sjunker då värdet på dessa bankers aktiekapital i förhållande till den del av inlåningen som är i utländsk valuta.
Vid en viss nivå på fallet skulle bankerna bli insolventa
och nödvändiggöra en större räddningsoperation från regeringens och/eller centralbankens sida.
Rutger Palmstierna, SvD Näringsliv 8/6 2009
Top
Is the US (and a number of other high-income countries) on the road to fiscal Armageddon?
Are recent jumps in government bond rates proof that investors are worried about fiscal prospects?
Martin Wolf, Financial Times June 2 2009
Latvian debt crisis shakes Eastern Europe
The central bank has been burning reserves to defend the lat in Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism,
but markets doubt whether Latvia has the political will to carry through draconian cuts in spending
– or whether such a policy even makes sense at this stage.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph 03 Jun 2009
Kollaps för lettisk finansmarknad
Den lettiska finansmarknaden fungerar inte längre till följd av valutaoron,
sedan Lettlands finansdepartement på onsdagen misslyckades med få sålt statspapper
DI 2009-06-03 16:23
Början på sidan - Top of page
Riksbanken har beslutat att återställa valutareserven genom att låna valuta för motsvarande 100 miljarder kronor via Riksgälden.
Beskedet kan ha stärkt oron för att Riksbanken vet något om utvecklingen i Baltikum som inte är allmänt känt.
Riksbanken vill återställa valutareserven i händelse av att de åtaganden som Riksbanken har ingått med bland annat centralbankerna i Estland och Lettland skulle utnyttjas.
Johan Javéus, chefsstrateg för valutamarknaden på SEB Merchant Banking till nyhetsbyrån Direkt, DI 27/5 2009
Measured by Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller indices, the pace of decline is accelerating in the third year of the housing market’s slump.
From the September 2006 peak, prices are down 31 per cent on average.
FT, Lex 26/5 2009
The Shadow Banking System and Hyman Minsky’s Economic Journey
How did financing get so creative? It didn’t happen within the confines of a regulated banking system,
which submits to strict regulatory requirements in exchange for the safety of government backstopping.
Instead, financing got so creative through the rise of a “shadow banking system,” which operated legally,
yet almost completely outside the realm of bank regulation.
Paul McCulley, May 2009
Början på sidan - Top of page
Consider what would happen if the UK or US were to attempt Hungarian or Estonian style cuts.
There would be a huge outcry.
So rather than taking the axe to public spending, the British and American governments are borrowing madly,
with no sign of any credible long-term plan to balance the books.
Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, May 25 2009
Top
What I hear more and more, both from bankers and from economists, is that the only way to end our financial crisis is through inflation.
Their argument is that high inflation would reduce the real level of debt, allowing indebted households and banks to deleverage faster and with less pain.
The advocates of such a strategy are not marginal and cranky academics. They include some of the most influential US economists.
Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times, May 24 2009
There are three key flaws to panglossian hopes for a bull market and a V-shaped economic recovery.
David Roche, Financial Times, May 19 2009
Början på sidan - Top of page
After the US, the country with the biggest banking problem is probably Germany.
a bank can apply to set up its own bad bank
It buys the structured securities from the bank at 90 per cent of book value, guaranteed by the government
Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times May 17 2009
Bengt Dennis och Per Unckel förespråkar delvalvering
Rolf Englund blog 2009-05-14
Did inflation targeting fail?
Central banks have mostly escaped blame for the crisis.
How can it have gone so wrong? Also about The Taylor Rule
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, May 5 2009
Pandemic
Read more here
MV=PQ
Okay, when you become a central banker, you are taken into a back room and they do a DNA change on you.
You are henceforth and forever genetically incapable of allowing deflation on your watch.
It becomes the first and foremost thought on your mind: deflation, we can't have it.
John Mauldin 24/4 2009
In the world that existed before the financial crisis, central bankers were triumphant.
They had defeated inflation and tamed the business cycle.
And they had developed a powerful intellectual consensus on how to do their job, summarised recently by David Blanchflower, a member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee, as “one tool, one target”.
The tool was the short-term interest rate, the target was price stability.
The Economist April 23rd 2009
Is America the new Russia?
Prof Johnson argues that the refusal of powerful institutions to admit losses
– aided and abetted by a government in thrall to the “money-changers”
– may make it impossible to escape from the crisis.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times April 14 2009
It's a bit misleading to talk about money supply,
because what money really is is roughly $2 trillion of cash and then $50 trillion in credit.
Because what do the banks do? They take deposits in and then they borrow money to leverage them up. I take my credit card and I spend with it.
I borrow against a house. I have an asset that rises, and I borrow against it.
John Mauldin 17/4 2009
Highly Recommended
By fixating on the anti-depression drill, authorities are failing to address
the root cause of the current crisis and recession
-- the lethal unwinding of unsustainable global imbalances.
"the willingness of consumers to live well beyond their means by extracting equity from over-valued homes"
Stephen Roach, April 13 (Bloomberg) 2009
The eurozone faces three threats more serious than any in the US or Britain:
the extreme vulnerability of Germany's economy to collapsing exports,
financial instability in Eastern Europe and
the growing tensions between the core and the periphery of the eurozone.
Between now and the German general election on September 27,
these dangers could combine into a perfect storm
Anatole Kaletsky The Times 9/4 2009
No, a wave of house repossessions will not necessarily teach the virtue of living within one’s means,
when the government is around to force lenders to stay their hands,
and create moral hazard on a huge scale
Irwin Stelzer The Sunday Times April 12, 2009
US Non-oil goods imports were down 25% y/y,
Brad Setser with nice charts
PPIP is a risky effort to buy time while the Obama administration tries to find a way to convince an immensely hostile Congress to supply
another $1 trillion, or more, to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets.
John H. Makin, American Enterprise Institute, April 2, 2009
The success of the Irish government’s plans to set up a “bad bank” rests on details that have not yet been finalised.
The loans have a nominal value of €80bn-€90bn – about half of Ireland’s annual economic output.
Financial Times April 8 2009
Germany’s government is finalising “bad bank” plans to deal with toxic financial assets
as part of efforts to restore confidence to the banking system that also include a
takeover offer launched this week for Hypo Real Estate, the stricken property lender.
Financial Times April 10 2009
The 10th anniversary of the Dow surpassing the 10,000 mark passed quietly last week,
even though a decade ago it was banner news across the country and world,
But today the Dow is at 8,017, nearly 20 percent lower than where it was 10 years ago
- making a seeming mockery of the often-quoted adage that stock market investments historically gain on average 7 percent a year.
Boston Herald)By JAY FITZGERALD April 06, 2009
This /The Geithner plan/ is a recipe for the insolvency of the FDIC and
an attempt to bail out bank bondholders using funds that have not even been allocated by Congress.
The whole plan is a bureaucratic abuse of the FDIC's balance sheet, which exists to protect ordinary depositors, not bank bondholders.
John P. Hussman, at John Mauldin, 6/4 2009
There are four deflationary spirals presently at work in the world economy, i.e.
the Keynesian savings paradox, Fisher’s debt deflation,
the cost cutting deflation, and the bank credit deflation.
Each of these deflationary spirals can be dealt with when they occur in isolation.
They become lethal when they interact with each other.
Paul de Grauwe 6/4 2009
The politics of bank rescue are toxic.
A former European finance minister reminded me that, from a political perspective, there is nothing in it for a rational politician.
The real problem with the US bank rescue plan is that it may exhaust the public’s sense of fair play.
Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times April 5 2009
How owners' equivalent rent duped the Fed
In 2003 and 2004 the average fed-funds rates were lower than in any year since 1955 when the rate series began.
Monetary policy, mortgage finance, relaxed lending standards, and tax-free capital gains provided
astonishing economic stimulus: Mortgage loan originations increased an average of 56% per year for three years
-- from $1.05 trillion in 2000 to $3.95 trillion in 2003
Tim Iacono 6/4 2009
Stockholmsbörsen var stigande vid lunchtid på måndagen i likhet med de ledande europeiska börserna på fortsatt
optimism om att den globala ekonomiska nedgången börjar närma sig botten och att det värsta av finanskrisen är över.
Dagens Industri 2009-04-06
It seems that hedge funds have been designated for ritual sacrifice, even though they played no more than a cameo role in the genesis of this crisis.
It was not they who took on extreme debt leverage: it was the banks
– up to 30 times in the US and nearer 60 times for some in Europe that used off-books "conduits" to increase their bets.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph April 2009
Faced with this cataclysm, policymakers have been fighting back with the biggest and most synchronised macroeconomic stimulus since the second world war.
The G20 and the world economy, The Economist editorial, April 2nd 2009
även om Annika Falkengrens två miljoner kronor anses provocerande är de med förlov sagt bara felräkningspengar i jämförelse med vad svenska banker förlorar i Baltikum.
SEB, Swedbank och Nordea har över 500 miljarder kronor – nära en femtedel av Sveriges BNP – utlånade i den krisdrabbade regionen.
Sofia Nerbrand SvD Kolumn ledarsidan 23 mars 2009
The Financial Accounting Standards Board voted to adopt new guidelines under the so-called mark-to-market accounting rules.
The changes will allow the assets to be valued at what they would go for in an "orderly" sale, as opposed to a forced or distressed sale.
CNBC 2/4 2009
What is needed is both a large increase in aggregate demand and
a shift in its distribution, away from chronic deficit countries, towards surplus ones.
Unless and until surplus countries recognise that this cannot continue,
no durable escape from the crisis will be achieved.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times March 31 2009
Folkpartiets ekonomiske talesman Carl B Hamilton säger nej tack till en kraftigt expansiv politik
i ett läge utan säker internationell uppgång i sikte.
Här även med citat av Anders Ferm och Carl Bildt
DN/TT 31/3 2009
US house prices fell by a record 19% in January compared with a year earlier
The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price index records prices in 20 of the largest cities in the US.
BBC 31/3 2009
The Geithner plan
"It still is not going to solve the problems of those institutions that are effectively insolvent. If you buy the assets at true long-term value, they're still going to be under water,"
Nouriel Roubini, in an interview with CNBC, 31/3 2009
Stock markets across the globe have to be close to a turning point.
Alan Greenspan, Financial Times, March 30 2009
Finanskrisen gjorde 1930 års nedgång till depression
En allvarlig lågkonjunktur i USA utvecklades till Den stora depressionen genom att banksystemet inte fungerade.
Förluster och bankrusningar medförde att 9 000 banker gick omkull.
Detta var en medveten politik från finansminister Mellon.
Danne Nordling 27/3 2009
1929
Samtal med Johan Norberg
Varför blev det finanskris?
Var det girigheten som löpte amok?
Den osunda kulturen före finanskrisen hade aldrig uppstått
om det inte varit för alla politiska misslyckanden.
PJ Anders Linder, SvD 29 mars 2009
Strategy to avoid a pension catastrophe
Marginal Revolution, a very good economics blog, decided to republish a Long View from February last year
it ended with the throwaway line that Nouriel Roubini put all of his money into stocks
John Authers, FT Investment editor, March 20 2009
The extraordinary risk-management discipline that developed out of the writings of the University of Chicago’s Harry Markowitz in the 1950s
produced insights that won several Nobel prizes in economics.
It was widely embraced not only by academia but also
by a large majority of financial professionals and global regulators
But in August 2007, the risk-management structure cracked
a potential loss of at least $1,000bn
Alan Greenspan, Financial Times March 26 2009
Bankgarantin blev grundbulten i den svenska modellen.
Det var kronans fall i november 1992 som på sikt tog Sverige ur krisen
Lars Jonung om Amerikas väg ur bankkollapsen DN 2009-03-24
A thinly veiled attempt to transfer up to hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayer funds to the commercial banks,
by buying toxic assets from the banks at far above their market value.
It is no surprise that stock market capitalisation of the banks has risen about 50 per cent
Jeffrey Sachs, Financial Times March 25 2009
This is not a true market mechanism, because the government is subsidising the risk-bearing.
Prices may not prove low enough to entice buyers or high enough to satisfy sellers.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times March 24 2009
If the reports are correct, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, has persuaded President Obama to recycle Bush administration policy
— specifically, the “cash for trash” plan proposed, then abandoned, six months ago by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
It won’t work.
PAUL KRUGMAN March 22, 2009
De fasta växelkursernas tid är förbi. Men...
Kronan försvagas mot alla valutaindex. Få tycks riktigt bry sig.
Generaldirektören Olle Wästberg, som var statssekreterare i finansdepartementet under valutakrisen 1992
Expressen 23/3 2009
Vi befinner oss mitt i den största ekonomiska nedgången på 80 år,
för första gången i världshistorien har vi en global kris.
Följderna kan bli synnerligen stora och kostsamma,
men det verkar inte ha utlöst någon nämnvärd kreativitet bland våra ledare.
Kristina Persson, Global Utmaning 17/3 2009
Fed ska köpa statspapper för upp till 300 miljarder dollar.
Finansieringen sker genom sedelpressen.
DI 19/3 2009
Federal Reserve plan stuns investors - plans to buy $300bn of US government debt,
triggering a plunge in bond yields and the dollar
Financial Times March 18 2009
Ekonomiläroböckerna och finanskrisen
I min egen lärobok, som har kommit i elva upplagor, finns visserligen en del avsnitt
om bubblor och om irrationaliteten och kasten på t.ex valutamarknaderna.
Men de avsnitten måste byggas ut till nästa upplaga.
Likaså måste Keynes få en grundligare behandling - inte minst begreppet “likviditetsfälla” och
hur den påverkar penningpolitiken.
Klas Eklund blog 2/3 2009
The forthcoming Group of 20 summit is going to be a disaster.
So it looks like it is going to be an L – not a V or a U.
I mean an L-shaped recession, one that starts with a steep decline, followed by very low growth for many years.
Wolfgang Munchau, Eurointelligence 09.03.2009
The Bank of England may have averted a catastrophe.
If ever there was a time when this country needed its own monetary authorities this is the moment.
Those nations with fossilised or timid central banks clinging to outdated ideologies are not so lucky.
Even less lucky are those such as Spain and Ireland that have surrendered policy to a body that is deaf to their pleas and constitutionally obliged to ignore the welfare of their particular societies.
They face crucifixion.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Daily Telegraph, 08 Mar 2009
As a shell-shocked world tries to fathom how its economic collapse happened, commentators are busily outbidding each other with claims about the exceptional nature of this crisis.
But the most astounding fact is how familiar it look compared to past financial crashes.
The story of the modern capitalist economy is a rhythmic repetition of cycles, syncopated by eerily similar crises.
Financial Times March 9 2009
Next week, Bo Lundgren, the head of Sweden’s debt office who played a central role in resolving his country’s banking mess in the early 1990s, will embark on a striking mission.
Washington’s Congressional Oversight Panel has summoned Mr Lundgren and others to explain how they fixed Sweden’s banks – presumably to glean tips on what Washington should do next.
Gillian Tett, Financial Times March 12 2009
Sweden was able aggressively to reflate and stimulate demand for its output by allowing its currency to float.
It is important to understand that that option is not available today
to the large economies engulfed in a global crisis.
John H. Makin, American Enterprise Institute
(Timbros storasyster) March 2, 2009
|
