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Senaste nytt 2006
Latest at this site 2006

To listen to the Bears over the past few years, you would have thought we would all be in breadlines and soup kitchens by now.
Why Hasn't "IT" Happened Yet?
Even though the markets, at their lows in March of 2003 had lost over $6 trillion of value, IT still hasn't happened yet.
Aubie Baltin 27/12 2005

Greenspan's reputation may not be totally secure
By Sir Howard Davies, BBC 29/12 2005

The flattening of the yield curve has been much talked about lately
Tim Iacono with good links 19/12 2005

The tax-break-enhanced buildup in U.S. real estate wealth since 2000 has been about $5 trillion.
John Makin 20/12 2005

The imbalances are now enormous, far more glaring than at any point in the past.
Reducing any one imbalance to zero, or even compressing them all to a more manageable level, appears to be impossible without a major upheaval
Peter Bernstein, cit. by John Mauldin 23/12 2005

Managing an economy with demand at 107% of income/GDP involves continually stoking up confidence to ensure capital gains to justify rising household debt take-up – without which the economy founders into a deflationary spiral.
Leigh Skene, an independent economic consultant in Lombard Street Associates, December 2005

"Den 27 augusti 1975 slog nyheten ned som en bomb i den svenska debatten"
"Revolution i Sverige" stod det på DN:s löpsedlar. Boken "Löntagarfonder" hade kommit ut.
- Huvudförfattare var den då 61-årige LO-ekonomen /Rudolf Meidner/
Anna Hedborg, medförfattare, men det framgår inte av hennes artikel, Fokus 22/12 2005

The Mess Greenspan Leaves
We can see here how the policy of inflating bubble after bubble to avoid the recessionary implications of previous bubbles has resulted in ever greater imbalances, with the savings rate falling ever lower after each bubble and the debt burden growing ever greater.
More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise
Stefan Karlsson, December 26, 2005

The idea of supply-side economics was born when a guy called Arthur Laffer sketched a curve on a cocktail napkin in 1974, and the debate over its merits has been raging ever since.
The Law of Supply and Demand
Emily Messner, Washington Post, December 18 2005

The Republican Party is fracturing before our eyes.
Moderate Republicans know these cuts in programs for the poor are unsustainable. Very conservative Republicans want to cut spending far more than the rest of the party (or its voters) will allow.
E. J. Dionne Jr. December 16, 2005

Rudolf Meidner har avlidit. Han blev 91 år gammal.
Meidners väg till träldom
Peter Wolodarski DN 14/12 2005

Rudolf präglades av en kombination av klarsinne, intellektuell briljans och unik förmåga att hitta konkreta lösningar på motsägelsefulla problem.
Håkan A Bengtsson, Arenagruppen, 12/12 2005

Få personer har i modern tid haft så stor betydelse för samhället och för arbetarrörelsen som Meidner.
Den solidariska lönepolitiken ledde till väldiga övervinster när de anställda också i de mest framgångsrika företagen avstod från höga löneökningar.
Lena Askling, Aftonbladet 2005-12-10

The late Herbert Stein is famous for saying that what can’t go on forever, won’t.
This then is a world of strong growth.
Martin Wolf, Finacial Times 21/12 2005

En skärskådning av det svenska partisystemet blottar nya skiljelinjer och underliggande, latenta partier. Ett sådant skulle kunna vara pragmatikerna (p), som förenar delar av s och m.
Den svenska politikens outsossing
Ju mer partiväsendet eroderar, ju färre aktiva medlemmar partierna har, desto lättare blir det att genomföra omläggningar.
Kay Glans, Axess nummer 9, 2005

H

Studio Etts fredagskrönikör Björn Elmbrant har läst en bok som behandlar
dagens borgerlighet. Den har övergett frihetskampen, säger SAF:s förre chefsideolog Sture Eskilsson.
Björn Elmbrant 16/12 2005

The US current account deficit narrowed in the third quarter of this year because of $9bn of insurance payments in the wake of Hurricane Katrina paid by foreign insurance companies
The deficit was equal to 6.2 per cent of GDP.
FT 18/12 2005

Richard Rainwater. Richard who?
Appearing in the current issue of Fortune Magazine:
An economic tsunami is about to hit the global economy as the world runs out of oil.
Tim Iacono 14/12 2005
Very Important Article

Let’s begin with a riddle: Why is the dollar like a Republican president?
Answer: Because the dollar faces incessant predictions of imminent collapse, but in the end it wins out over weaker alternatives.
There are only three currencies in the “global store of value” league: the dollar, the euro, and the yen.
John Makin, American Enterprise Institute, 29/11 2005

Monetary analysis is essential, not old-fashioned
Can any central bank rely solely on developments in money and credit to come to its policy decisions? The answer is clearly “no”. Can any central bank afford to ignore the information in monetary developments in formulating monetary policy? Again, the answer is “no”.
Otmar Issing, Financial Times, December 15 2005

Lennart Berntson om Werner Schmidt - C-H Hermansson. En politisk biografi
Det är obegripligt hur denna historierevisionism har kunnat passera som vetenskapligt projekt vid en akademisk institution i Sverige.
SvD 15/12 2005

The U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly widened to a record $68.9 billion in October
Imports rose 2.7 percent and exports increased 1.7 percent
Bloomberg 14/12 2005

BBC: Earlier this week, China announced its own trade surplus was at $90.8bn for the first 11 months of 2005, three times the level of the previous year.

Standard & Poor's Corp. cut its credit rating on General Motors (GM, news, msgs) to B from BB- today.
"This year has witnessed a stunning collapse of GM's financial performance," Robert Schultz, an S&P credit analyst, said.

S&P is pessimistic that GM's recovery plan will work, the agency said, and the auto giant may have to seek more drastic measures, namely Chapter 11.
CNBC 12/12 2005

Sverige ska starta egen produktion av vaccin.
Morgan Johansson: Vi vet att om vi skulle få en pandemi sprids den väldigt snabbt.
Ekot 13/12 2005

Skillnaderna mellan olika invandrargrupper är mycket stora när det gäller brottslighet.
– Från vissa länder kommer den intellektuella eliten, akademiker och liknande. I de fallen blir brottsligheten lägre.
Från andra länder kommer människor från väldigt fattiga och socialt utsatta sfärer av samhället. I de fallen är brottsligheten högre.
Jerzy Sarnecki, DN 12/12 2005 i anledning av Rojas

Greg Ip, Fed stenographer (née Wall Street Journal reporter), penned a story titled
"Long Study of Great Depression Has Shaped Bernanke's Views."
Bernanke has no comprehension of the fact that booms and busts are related.
Bill Fleckenstein, CNBC 12/12 2005

The number of zeros on formal statistics sometimes disguises their real meaning.
The US government currently borrows $5,000 a year on behalf of each US family, which it dares not tax for electoral reasons. This is the source of the budget deficit.
That uncollected money remains in the hands of the family, which currently prefers buying foreign goods and spends $5,000 on them, producing the trade deficit.
Paul Tustain 6/12 2005

New figures coming out of the US economy confirms that in almost every respect it is doing significantly better than expected. It is impressive.
Carl Bildt blog 6/12 2005

The biggest secret during the past few years in the bond market has been why intermediate and long-term interest rates have remained so low in the face of a 300 basis point uplift from the Federal Reserve.
Today's short rate of 4% is really equivalent to 6% in my view,
a rate that was only 50 basis points shy of the cyclical tightening peak of 6½% in 2000.
Bill Gross, Mauldin's Outside The Box 5/12 2005

Vad kan vi lära av kraschen?
Bank- och fastighetskrisen 1990-1993

SNS 2005 Nils-Eric Sandberg (red.)

The Greenspan Warnings
Nick Barisheff November 22, 2005

Derivatives Dangers
The Potential Drop in Asset Values
The Housing Bubble
The Coming Crisis in Social Security
Oil Supply Risks
The Rising Budget Deficit
Rising Long-Term Interest Rates
The Record-High Current Account Deficit

Oljan behöver inte ta slut för att det ska bli kaos. Det räcker med att den blir en bristvara för att vår civilisation, uppbyggd av plast och billiga transporter, hotar att kollapsa.
Colin Campbell bildade ASPO (Association for the study of peak-oil and gas)
Lars Berge, SvD 5/12 2005

Under the placid surface, there are disturbing trends: huge imbalances, disequilibria, risks - call them what you will. Altogether the circumstances seem to me as dangerous and intractable as any I can remember, and I can remember quite a lot.
What really concerns me is that there seems to be so little willingness or capacity to do much about it.
Paul A. Volcker, Washington Post, April 10, 2005

F. A. Hayek: "The continuous injection of additional amounts of money at points of the economic system where it creates a temporary demand, which must cease when the increase of money stops or slows down, together with the expectation of a continuing rise in prices, draws labor and other resources into employments which can last only so long as the increase of the quantity of money continues at the same rate - or perhaps even only so long as it continues to accelerate at a given rate . . . would rapidly lead to a disorganization of all economic activity."
Empire of Debt, John Mauldin, December 2, 2005

Jean-Philippe Cotis, Chief Economist:
Worsening fiscal and current account imbalances present policymakers with clear challenges. Addressing them successfully will require substantial policy adjustments.
OECD Economic Outlook No. 78, November 2005
Very Important Article

House prices in the US have risen by more than 50 per cent in the past decade but in spite of fears of a crash, the property market is not overvalued, according to a new analysis of the world housing boom by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Only the UK, Ireland and Spain were significantly overvalued
The housing markets in Germany and Japan were undervalued
Financial Times 1/12 2005

If the pernicious drift toward fiscal instability in the United States and elsewhere is not arrested
the adjustment process could be quite painful for the world economy
pernicious \pur-NISH-us\, adjective: Highly injurious; deadly; destructive; exceedingly harmful.
Alan Greenspan 2/12 2005

Why does the European Central Bank want to raise interest rates?
The biggest economic issue for Europe today is not structural reform but the ECB’s attitude to the interaction between low interest rates, rising house prices, financial deregulation, mortgage borrowing, and consumption
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, 28/11 2005

M3 is today definitely not reflective of marketplace perceptions with respect to “moneyness.”
The Fed has lost control of our nation’s “money” and Credit creation processes.
Tim Iacono 30/11 2005

Moderaterna är övertaktiska och undviker konfrontation i alla frågor. Jag är inte ens säker på att det valtaktiskt är rätt. De sviker dem som vill ha en annan politik.
Så vilket råd skulle du ge den företagare som vill rösta för en annan politik i dag?
– Då bör de rösta på Maud Olofsson. Hon är den tydligaste förespråkaren för marknadsekonomin i dag.
Sture Eskilsson, intervjuad i Resumé 2005

The European Central Bank is about to raise its interest rate for the first time in two and a half years. Does this move make any sense?
The ECB must not let an obsessive worry over what appear to be non-existent inflationary dangers kill off a fragile recovery.
That would be worse than a crime. It would be a blunder.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, November 30 2005

Discontinuance of M3
What's Happened To M3?
David Chapman, November 10, 2005

Sture Eskilsson, tidigare informationsdirektör i SAF, är den person som har betytt mest för den marknadsliberala opinionsbildningen i Sverige under de senaste decennierna.
Med efterträdaren Janerik Larsson hack i häl, ska det sägas.
Thomas Gür, SvD ledarsida, 24/11 2005

This Time it Really is Different
To expect the pendulum to swing so far in one direction, without completing a equal move in the opposite, is a leap of faith as extraordinary as the bubble itself.
Peter Schiff, November 21, 2005

Instead of trying to come up with something clever on a subject in which we are already in way over our heads, this post simply provides
a few colorful charts (of M3)
and links to some other stories on this topic
Tim Iacono, 22/11 2005

Ben Bernanke

Einstein and the US Dollar: Is the US Currency Rewriting the Laws of Gravity?
The simple answer is not and I will try to explain why.
Nouriel Roubini's Blog, Nov 21 2005

Deteriorating Global Liquidity
a large current account deficit is almost irrelevant
Niels C. Jensen, Partner Absolute Return Partners LLP, 21/11 2005

Olja - jakten på det svarta guldet när världens oljekällor sinar
På drygt hundra år har vi förbrukat en stor del av dessa resurser och vant oss vid ett välfärdssamhälle som i allt väsentligt byggt på obegränsad tillgång till olja och billig energi. Nu väntar oljebrist med förödande konsekvenser.
Gunnar Lindstedt, Bokförlaget DN
Bokus 2005

"Världsekonomin på väg mot avgrunden"
USA:s underskott mot omvärlden blir allt större, samtidigt som överskotten stiger i Asien och de oljeexporterande länderna. Detta är ohållbart, men ingen lösning är sikte.
Utan mer flexibla växelkurser, där dollarn får flyta fritt mot övriga valutor, blir det svårt att komma till rätta med både underskott i USA och överskott i Asien.
Johan Schück, DN 19/11 2005

The Coming Disaster in the Derivatives Market
Click here

SAF:s legendariske informationschef berättar om sina insatser för fri företagsamhet under den långa karriären i näringslivets organisationer från sent 1950- till sent 1990-tal.
Här finns viktiga budskap om uthållighetens, breddens, stridsberedskapens och det värderingsburna tänkandets betydelse för framgång i opinionen.
PJ Anders Linder, blog, 18/11 2005

Om boken "Bortom den starka statens politik?" av Rothstein, Bo och Vahlne Westerhäll, Lotta (red), SNS förlag
Hur kommer det sig då att socialdemokraterna och de andra ledande partierna övergav det tidigare sysselsättningsmålet? Varför blev plötsligt inflationsbekämpning viktigare än arbetslöshetsbekämpning?
Fredrik Öjemar, politiken.se, 15/11 2005

Om Sture Eskilssons "Från folkhem till nytt klassamhälle"
Skarpsynt iakttagare, anhängare av anständigt samhälle
Den ska egentligen läsas av alla som vill ha en bild av dagens Sverige, och borde vara årets julklapp.
Per Dahl, Barometern 14/11 2005

Less like a titan and more like the Titanic, holed below the water-line, sinking slowly by the bow to the sound of loud shocks and bangs as bulkheads give way, one after the other.
The chief executive on the bridge, Rick Wagoner, can rush around and bark orders, but to little effect.
The Economist 18/11 2005

Can GM be saved?
At the heart of the issue is whether or not GM's pension funds are fully funded now.
Michael Shedlock, 16/11 2005

Rick Wagoner, chairman and chief executive of General Motors:
“I’d like to just set the record straight here and now,” - “There is absolutely no plan, strategy or intention for GM to file for bankruptcy.”
Financial Times, November 17 2005 15:35

Kronan har försvagats lite mer än vad vi räknat med. Varför det är så är lite av ett mysterium säger Ingemar Hansson.
DN/TT 17/11 2005

The extraordinary importance of American interest-rate policy.
Buttonwood, The Economist 15/11 2005

Bara tre gånger under de senaste tio åren har kronan varit svagare mot euron (och dess föregångare ecun) än vad den är i dag.
Orsaken är helt enkelt Riksbankens rekordlåga styrränta. Ränteskillnader verkar vara den viktigaste orsaken till det senaste årets valutarörelser, både dollaruppgången och kronförsvagningen
Joakim Stymne, SvD ledarsida 16/11 2005

Sweden's current account surplus is equivalent to 3 per cent of GDP.
"Swedish economy flourishes as Europe's yen stumbles"
Financial Times 15/11 2005

A method to the dollar madness
So what's going on? Currencies are supposed to tumble in price when trade deficits climb this high.
The dollar's up because the euro is down
Jim Jubak, CNBC 15/11 2005

If President Chirac and his ministers had any sense they would stop philosophising about the ideals of the French Revolution and would focus instead on the practical policies required to accelerate the economy’s growth rate
In doing this, they could hardly do better than recall the policies that pulled Britain out of the terrible recession of 1979-81.
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, 10/11 2005

"To date, despite a current account deficit exceeding 6% of our gross domestic product, we -- or more exactly, the economic entities that comprise the U.S. economy -- are experiencing few difficulties in attracting the foreign saving required to finance it, as evidenced by the recent upward pressure on the dollar,"
I doubt, however, whether, given the current size of global financial markets, locking together two major currencies such as the dollar and the euro is feasible any longer. Over time, the required large domestic adjustments would be quite unlikely to be accepted by the majority of residents of either the United States or those of the euro area.
Remarks by Chairman Alan Greenspan, November 14, 2005

It’s often forgotten that when Bush come to power in early 2001 the US economy was in recession. Since then there has been three waves of tax cuts – the last in 2003 – and a remarkable improvement in the performance of the US economy.
More than 4 million new jobs have been created, and unemployment has dropped below 5 %. Productivity has been increasing very fast. And the federal budget deficit has started to shrink as a result of the rapid growth in tax income.
Carl Bildt blog 13/11 2005

En avvikande uppfattning hade dock Olle Lindgren, ekonom med anknytning till SE-banken. Den svenska kronan hade inte marknadens förtroende och skulle komma att falla. Hans inlägg mottogs med avvisande tystnad.
Ur Sture Eskilsson "Från folkhem till nytt klassamhälle" (Fischer & Co)

Politicians and pundits explain /US/ current-account deficit by pointing at China.
In fact, the of countries with the biggest surpluses is no longer Asia but oil exporters
This year, oil exporters could haul in $700 billion from selling oil to foreigners.
The Economist, 10/11 2005

U.S. trade deficit at record high - $66.1 billion
Imports rose 2.4 percent and exports slumped 2.6 percent

Att bo i eget hus ger ingen inkomst
Varför ska radhus i Värmdö kosta långt mer i skatt än stora villor i Bergslagen? Räcker det inte med att priset är så mycket högre?
PJ Anders Linder

TV8 Sture Eskilsson utfrågas i ”O som i Ortmark”
om striden om opinionen under några kritiska decennier och om uppladdningen inför valet nästa år.
TV8 10/11 kl. 21:00

The official U.S. government Web site for information on pandemic flu and avian influenza.

The air is coming out of America’s property-price bubble.
Buttonwood, The Economist

Vad blev det kvar av stabilitetspakten?
Lars Calmfors och Anders Borg
SIEPS tisdagen den 8 november 2005, 9.00 - 11.30

Den svenska kronan har försvagats kraftigt den senaste tiden, och både mot euron och dollarn är kronan svagare än på flera år.
Det betyder dyrare utlandsresor för hushållen men exportindustrin drar nytta av den billigare kronan.
Ekot, Tommy Fredriksson, 7/11 2005

The latest annual World Energy Outlook report from the International Energy Agency (IEA)
Under current consumption trends, energy demand will rise by more than 50% over the next 25 years
It says the world has seen "years of under-investment" in both oil production and the refinery sector.
BBC 7/11 2005

Lennart Nilsson pictures of The Virus H5N1
Dagens Nyheter kan nu som första tidning visa hans bilder.
DN 6/11 2005

Germany’s incoming “grand coalition” of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats is about to commit the biggest economic policy error since unification – the attempt to pursue budget consolidation at the expense of all other economic policy goals. In doing so, it risks turning a five-year-long stagnation into a full-scale depression.
It would be more accurate, perhaps, to compare her /Ms Merkel/ to Heinrich Brüning, a Christian conservative who was German chancellor from 1930 to 1932.
Wolfgang Munchau, Financial Times, 7/11 2005
Wolfgang Munchau is an associate editor of the Financial Times

Higher interest rates have produced a rally in the U.S. dollar
The dollar is even up 12% this year against the euro, after falling by almost 50% against the European currency from 2002 to 2004.
Jim Jubak 4/11 2005

Podcasting

The solution to the conundrum of why rising short rates have not led to higher yields at the long end is this paradox: in order to raise rates, the Fed must stop raising rates.
Eleven successive rate increases have failed to budge intermediate and long rates, an unprecedented situation.
It is time for the Fed to quit trying to force up long-term rates with anti-inflation hikes in short rates, which the market believes will indeed prove prophylactic against inflation, and opt instead for steady short rates, which would let rising inflation expectations lift long-term rates and temper speculative fervour in property markets.
Bill Miller and Paul McCulley, Pimco October 2005

CNN takes in-depth look at bird flu
In an insightful special program hosted by Stan Grant, "Bird Flu, Preventing a Pandemic," CNN International correspondents report from Asia, Europe and America on the threats, fears and potential cures around the virus
November 3, 5 and 6, 2005

It never fails. Every presentation or speech I have made on the economics of global rebalancing over the past three and a half years almost always ends with the same question:
“When will these adjustments ever occur?”
The history of the past few years is littered with false alarms over the coming US current account adjustment. Call it the “boy-cries-wolf syndrome”. The longer the world endures mounting imbalances without suffering any serious consequences, the more the financial market consensus believes this disequilibrium is sustainable.
Stephen Roach, Financial Times, 1/11 2005

President Bush announced Tuesday that he would ask Congress for $7.1 billion in emergency funding to prepare the country for a possible flu pandemic.
"A pandemic is a lot like a forest fire," Bush said. "If caught early, it might be extinguished with limited damage; if allowed to smolder undetected, it can grow to an inferno that spreads quickly beyond our ability to control it."
"En gnista kan tända en präriebrand"
CNN 2/11 2005

Lars Ekdahl, Arkiv Förlag
Mot en Tredje väg
En biografi över Rudolf Meidner

Studien har finansierats av Östersjöstiftelsen
2005

“it’s different this time”
Because the U.S. economy has evolved into a highly levered finance-based economy, it stands to our reason that this modern day version is more sensitive to changes in interest rates than those of years past.
PIMCO has for several years now focused on the real interest rate – Fed Funds minus inflation – as the most legitimate indicator of neutrality.
Bill Gross, November 2005

Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Libby resigned Friday after a federal grand jury indicted him on five charges related to the leak probe: one count of obstruction of justice, two counts of perjury and two counts of making false statements.

Gordon Liddy
One of Liddy's most famous feats of endurance would have to be where he would hold his hand on a candle flame until the flesh on his hand was burnt.
According to the book "All The President's Men", he did this once at a dinner party and afterwards somebody asked, "What's the trick?"
He replied, "The trick is not minding."

It seems clear the Fed is not going to find it easy to maintain relative price stability.
Brad DeLong, Financial Times 28/10 2005
The writer is professor of economics at University of California, Berkeley, and and NBER research associate

Let's look at what Bernanke really said.
"Sustained deflation can be highly destructive to a modern economy and should be strongly resisted. Fortunately, for the foreseeable future, the chances of a serious deflation in the United States appear remote indeed, in large part because of our economy's underlying strengths but also because of the determination of the Federal Reserve and other U.S. policymakers to act..."
John Mauldin, 28/10 2005
Very Important Article

Alan Greenspan will be remembered as Copernicus, Columbus and Galileo, rolled into one.
In Europe central bankers and politicians still refuse to learn these lessons. They are still trying to apply the simplistic monetarist theory once believed to be the only alternative to the old gold standard, but thoroughly discredited by the Greenspan Fed.
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, 27/10 2005

Comment by Rolf Englund:
For once, I beg to differ with Anatole Kaletsky. Defending the exchange rate is fundamentally different to monetarism.
A central bank can target, the interest rate, the exchange rate or the money supply.
One of them - and the other numbers will be what they will be - Que Sera, Sera

Dear Ben, Congratulations on your nomination as chairman of the Federal Reserve
Do not believe for a moment that targeting inflation is all there is to being a successful Fed chairman
You will need to react strongly to low probability, high cost dangers.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, October 26 2005

Alan Greenspan is everything an all-powerful central banker should be: boring, elderly, brainy, long-winded, and most importantly LUCKY.
Alan Greenspan has perpetuated a recession-less economy mentality that will ultimately lead to the mother of all recessions when the giant U.S. real estate bubble he created pops slowing our heavily-levered consumption-driven country
Stein&McIntyre 25/10 2005

The New Inflation
It is not clear what type of inflation - CPI or asset-based - will arise from excess monetary accommodation.
We've learned a lot about inflation in the past 35 years. From the double-digit price increases of the 1970s to a close brush with deflation in 2003
Stephen Roach, October 17, 2005

Comment by Rolf Englund:
I never thought that I would argue that Stephen Roach is neglecting the US Trade Deficit. But so be it. What will happen to the US inflation rate when the dollar dips?
Did I hear "New Era" and "This time is different" ?

Mr. Bernanke
The Phillips Curve - the notorious trade off between inflation and unemployment that is still popular among the Fed staff and in Congress - has been intellectually repudiated.
Mr. Bernanke supports making the Bush tax cuts permanent as soon as possible. He's an ardent free trader. One mystery is where he stands on the global monetary system, and the growth benefits of stable exchange rates.
Wall Street Journal editorial 25/10 2005

Enter Ben Bernanke and His Helicopter Printing Press
Click here

WHY THE FED HAS NO OTHER ALTERNATIVE BUT TO PRINT MONEY!
Why is the US Fed so concerned about deflation that Mr. Bernanke even suggested dropping US dollar bills from a helicopter in order to combat it?
There is one condition under which deflation is a disaster and this is when total credit market debt is high as a percentage of the economy
Marc Faber, October 18, 2005

Fed would like to see a little inflation come back, as well as significantly higher interest rates, before they have to deal with the next recession or slowdown.
It would not be politically correct to state they intend to stop the increase in housing prices.
John Mauldin, 21/10 2005

Riksdagens finansutskott har beslutat att utvärdera Riksbankens penningpolitik. Utvärderingen ska omfatta perioden 1995-2005.
Kommentar av Rolf Englund:
Jaha, men varför utelämna de viktiga åren 1993 och 1994?
Då Sverige, till skillnad från England inte sänkte räntan radikalt, ehuru valutan nu flöt.

Our trade deficit is now roughly the size of the current account deficit, and very large relative to our export base. And our net investment income balances are now likely to move into deficit.
These imbalances matter because at some point they will have to reverse. Past episodes of external adjustment offer some reassurance, but the present circumstances seem sufficiently different from historical precedent that history may not be a particularly useful guide.
Tim Geithner, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 19/10 2005

On Thursday October 20th, Indonesia's health minister, Siti Fadillah Supari, expressed concern over clusters of possible bird flu within human families that had been detected in the country in recent days.
She said such clusters, if confirmed, could mean that the virus's transformation into a form more threatening to humans may now have happened.
The Economist, Thursday October 20 2005

UN says avian flu may hit Africa next
Governments and farmers in these parts of the world, particularly in East Africa, are unprepared, lacking both the money and scientific infrastructure to control outbreaks of the virus
The next stops on bird migratory pathways are not in western Europe, but in the Middle East, North Africa and East Africa, UN officials said.
Elisabeth Rosenthal International Herald Tribune 20/10 2005

Quarantines work well at controlling the spread of some types of disease. But there isn't any quarantine that would help stop pandemic flu.
Wendy Orent, Author, Plague: "The Mysterious Past and Terrifying Future of the World's Most Dangerous Disease"
Washington Post 16/8 2005

It is little wonder that Mr Greenspan has become an almost legendary figure. Yet how good has his performance been and what lessons does his tenure bequeath?
Mr Volcker had to crush inflation. Mr Greenspan had merely to keep the show on the road.
Another reason for questioning the unique sagacity of the chairman is that low inflation has broken out all over the world.
Surprisingly for a man once known as a gold bug and disciple of Ayn Rand’s libertarian philosophy, Mr Greenspan has emerged as the policymaker closest in spirit to Maynard Keynes.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 19/10 2005

I think the next Fed chairman is going to be Ben Bernanke. Of course, Bernanke is exactly the opposite of what you'd want to have in a Fed chairman
The new person will only get all the blame, because most folks don't understand that the problems due to hit us were created during Al's 18-year run.
Some people have suggested that Bob Rubin - Jim Grant
Bill Fleckenstein, CNBC, 17/10 2005

Austrian economics
Many economic commentators claim that trade deficits are never a problem. They are perfectly correct, just as spots are never a problem when someone gets measles.
My point is that if a trade deficit is being driven by a loose monetary policy then recession tends to be unavoidable.
A monetary-induced deficit by the United States distorts the pattern of international trade as well as internal investment. Many of its enterprises will become excessively oriented toward the domestic market. The opposite holds true for foreign exporters.
Gerard Jackson, 17/10 2005

Anders Tegnell, enhetschef på Socialstyrelsens smittskyddsenhet: Svenskarna prioriteras efter en plan
Inte ens alla i regeringen kan vara säkra på att få medicin.
- Fem ministrar räcker för att regeringen ska kunna fatta beslut
Aftonbladet 15/10 2005

Sir Liam Donaldson, the chief medical officer:
A bird flu pandemic will hit Britain, it would probably kill about 50,000 people in the UK
and a death toll of 750,000 was "not impossible".
BBC 16/10 2005

Många fruktansvärt hemska saker kan drabba Sverige. Terrorister kan slå till med kärnvapen. En pandemi kan dra in över landet. En komet kan slå ner.
Pandemier kan uppenbarligen vara oerhört farliga.
Men hur stor är egentligen risken att vi drabbas?
SvD-ledare 15/10 2005

You didn't need an oracle to know that Delphi would end up in America's bankruptcy courts
Delphi's future pension obligations alone are valued at $8.5 billion.
Estimates of GM's potential liability to Delphi range from $1.5 billion to $11 billion
The Economist 13/10 2005

Europe is not properly prepared for a flu pandemic and has inadequate supplies of vaccines and antiviral drugs, says an internal European Commission document obtained by the Financial Times.
FT 15/10 2005

The government changed the way it calculates the housing portion of the CPI back in 1982
If you use the old method, you would find that inflation is 5.3% today and even core inflation is 4.3%.
John Mauldin 14/10 2005

America's top health official says the world is "woefully unprepared" to respond to a pandemic, a problem made more urgent by concerns that the current avian flu virus could spread into a global health crisis.
CNN 6/10 2005

A plan developed by the Bush administration to deal with any possible outbreak of pandemic flu shows that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation's history.
A draft of the final plan, which has been years in the making and is expected to be released later this month, says a large outbreak that began in Asia would be likely, because of modern travel patterns, to reach the United States within "a few months or even weeks."
New York Times 8/10 2005

From Washington and Brussels to Hong Kong and Bangkok, governments have belatedly woken up to the global threat presented by the H5N1 strain of avian influenza now endemic in poultry across much of Asia.
Financial Times editorial 10/10 2005

We believe the best choice would be Don Kohn
How can The Economist endorse Mr Greenspan's right-hand man, when we have long criticised the chairman for failing to curb the stockmarket bubble in the late 1990s, and later for propping up the economy by inflating a housing bubble?
The Economist 13/10 2005

Something is changing in policy doctrine.
After a couple of decades in which the money supply almost disappeared from view it is now coming back
A new paper by Tim Congdon
Samuel Brittan, Financial Times 14/10 2005

Five major risks threaten the world economy.
US; renewed sharp increases in the current-account deficit leading to a crash of the dollar; a budget profile that is out of control; and an outbreak of trade protectionism.
China, which faces a possible hard landing from its recent overheating.
oil prices

Fred Bergsten, The Economist, 9/10 2005

Den nuvarande vice riksbankschefen Villy Bergström reste 1971 till Pyongyang på den nordkoreanska regimens bekostnad.
Tillsammans med sin reskamrat Kurt Wickman skrev han en obehaglig liten bok, Bilder från Nordkorea, på Tidens förlag med dagboksanteckningar och samhällsanalys.
Boken innehåller bland annat det dokument som de överlämnade till nordkoreanerna vid hemresan: "En av de saker som imponerat på oss är att alla koreanska medborgare tycks ha sina grundläggande behov väl tillgodosedda. Detta är så mycket mer imponerande som Demokratiska Folkrepubliken Korea var ett underutvecklat land och nästan fullkomligt förstört av USA-imperialismen, så sent som 1953. Vår självklara slutsats av denna iakttagelse är att den socialistiska samhällsordningen är överlägsen den kapitalistiska."
Sofia Nerbrand, SvD ledarsida 3/10 2005
Med Villy Bergströms förklaring till att han lämnar posten som vice riksbankschef

Because the U.S. imports about 50 percent more goods and services than it exports, exports have to grow about twice as fast just to stabilize the trade deficit, economists said.
The U.S. trade deficit widened to $59 billion in August
Bloomberg 13/10 2005

Enligt vår uppfattning stod det finansiella systemet i Sverige inför en kollaps den 24 september 1992. Utländska långivare hade tappat förtroendet för det svenska banksystemet.
Stefan Ingves och Göran Lind
Ekonomisk Debatt nr 1/1998

Kronkursförsvaret och Bank- och finanskrisen i korthet
Rolf Englund, oktober 2005

Let me summarize my sequence for house bubble popping
Bill Gross, Pimco, October 2005
Very important article

After 10 years of economic reforms, the Germans decided they had had enough.
The German electorate has launched a new era in European economic policy – a post-reform era.
The reforms by Schröder made life tougher but did not inject any new dynamism into the economy.
Wolfgang Munchau, Financial Times, October 10 2005

Före 1970 hade Sverige låga skatter, 65 procents ersättning i a-kassa och sjukförsäkring samt flera karensdagar vid sjukdom - och reallönerna ökade i raketfart. Under 1970- och 1980-talet rusade skatter och ersättningar i väg - och reallönerna låg still.
Kom tillbaka, Carl Bildt, Bengt Westerberg och Bo Lundgren. Allt är förlåtet.
Niklas Ekdal, signerat DN 10/10
Kronkursförsvaret

It cannot go on forever. The question is how and when it will stop
There are risks of a much more abrupt reversal, triggered by a big increase in protectionism in the US, a sudden decline in the world's demand for US assets or, more probably, both together. This could generate a sharp slowdown in the US and the rest of the world, possibly even a world recession.
We do know that the explosive increase in US current account deficits cannot continue indefinitely. It is possible that a smooth adjustment will indeed occur. It is also quite likely that the ultimate adjustment will be both swift and brutal.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times 8/10 2005

Alan Greenspan, the world's biggest serial bubble blower and most incompetent, irresponsible Fed chairman of all time
Bill Fleckenstein, CNBC 4/10 2005

Spanska sjukan var fågelinfluensa
Amerikanska forskare har återskapat det virus som orsakade spanska sjukan – influensaepidemin som dödade omkring 50 miljoner människor 1918.
DN Karin Bojs 5/10 2005

Fond memories of the successful 1980s adjustment of global trade imbalances have shaped much of the thinking about escape routes this time round. In 1985 the US “twin” current account and fiscal deficits consumed global economic discussions. Just as now, the worry was that a disorderly adjustment would derail the global economy. Yet by 1990 the US current account had been reduced from its peak of 3.4 per of gross domestic product to a manageable 1.4 per cent.
Europe and Japan cannot again repair US deficits
Tomorrow: Martin Wolf asks whether global imbalances will end smoothly or with a bump for the world economy Special report on world economy, separate section
Financial Times 7/10 2005
Good links

U.S. companies have announced plans to repatriate about $206 billion in foreign profits under a special one-year tax break.
A law signed by President Bush shortly before the 2004 election allows companies to transfer profit from overseas operations back to the U.S. this year at a special low tax rate of 5.25%.
Wall Street Journal 5/10 2005

When he steps down early next year, Alan Greenspan will leave behind a durable, non-inflationary economic expansion.
Cesar V. Conda, Wall Street Journal, 5/10 2005

"En krasch är på väg"
Världsekonomin befinner sig i allt värre obalans, eftersom amerikanerna konsumerar för mycket och européerna och asiaterna för litet. Om inget görs för att rätta till problemen, är en urladdning till sist ofrånkomlig, menar investmentbanken Morgan Stanleys chefsekonom Stephen Roach.
Johan Schück, DN Ekonomi 5/10 2005

H

Will the Housing Bubble Fizzle or Pop?
I do not buy this "permanently high plateau" nonsense or any talk of a miracle "soft landing" either. Nor do I accept that the business cycle has been defeated and there will be no more recessions.
Michael Shedlock 5/10 2005

What is most alarming about the current external trend is that the fall in the exchange rate of the dollar during 2002-04 had no appreciable impact at all in terms of reducing the trade balance.
The 2001 changes pushed tax receipts down toward 16 percent—the lowest level since 1959. The Bush tax cuts of 2001, 2003 and 2005 pushed it out of that safety zone, reducing it to its lowest level as a share of the economy in the modern era.
Marshall Auerback, October 3, 2005

A real estate slowdown that began in a handful of cities this summer has spread to almost every hot housing market in the country, including New York.
New York Times, October 4, 2005

President Bush on the possibility of an avian flu pandemic
"I'm concerned about what an avian flu outbreak could mean for the United States and the world,"
- Such an deadly event would raise difficult questions, such as how a quarantine might be enforced, he said.

"One option is the use of a military that's able to plan and move," he said. "So that's why I put it on the table. I think it's an important debate for Congress to have."
CNN 5/10 2005

How do we get out of this scenario alive?
By Rolf Englund, Financial Times 4/10 2005
Clyde Prestowitz, like many other commentators, warns us of what could happen: "a decline in the dollar, a rise in interest rates, a slowdown in growth, a rise in unemployment and declining home equity and household wealth - in a word, a recession, if not a depression"

We set out today wanting to talk about last Friday's commentary by Stephen Roach regarding two speeches made by Alan Greenspan earlier in the week. Normally we would pick out a few passages and excerpt them here, then add a few thoughts of our own in an attempt to enhance the overall experience of deriding the Fed Chairman for his many sins.
Like Cropping the Mona Lisa
Today, we experienced unexpected difficulty in taking this tack.
Tim Iacono 3/10 2005

The IMF ignored the problems created by Argentina's dollar peg and the resulting strong peso policy - which linked a sinking Argentine economy to a rising US economy and a rising dollar back in the late 90s.
Brad Setser blog 29/9 2005

George Bush reading The Economist magazine!
Nice pic

Verkligheten tvingar alla partier att anpassa sig.
I vårt fall tror jag att den förändring vi nu är inne i försköts på grund av Carl Bildts starka ställning, hans enorma förtroende efter Bosnien gjorde att den här processen inte kom i gång så tidigt som den borde. Erfarenheten från de borgerliga regeringsåren – till exempel kronförsvaret – borde direkt efter misslyckandet ha värderats med mer kritiska ögon. Men den kritiken kom att försenas.
Tyvärr, skulle jag säga, för det bidrog nog till att vi fick ett tioårigt socialdemokratiskt maktinnehav.
Anders Borg, intervjuad i Arena nr 2/2005

U.N. backs off 150m flu deaths
World Health Organization said it was impossible to estimate how many people could die from a possible new pandemic triggered by bird flu.
On Thursday, Dr. David Nabarro said a pandemic could come at any time and claim anywhere between 5 million and 150 million lives depending on the world's response to bird flu.
CNN 30/9 2005
Good links

The entire US economy is on life support from the People’s Bank of China and the Bank of Japan.
Any slowing of this flow could cause a decline in the dollar, a rise in interest rates, a slowdown in growth, a rise in unemployment and declining home equity and household wealth – in a word, a recession, if not a depression.
Clyde Prestowitz, Financial Times 29/9 2005
The writer is author of Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East. He is president and founder of the Economic Strategy Institute and was counsellor to the secretary of commerce in the Reagan Administration

Drömmer jag? Det är våren 2005 och jag läser en intervju med Anders Borg, hjärnan bakom moderatledaren Fredrik Reinfeldts politik. Stycket som jag läser om och om igen handlar om 90-talet och det han säger gör mig stum. Så här står det:
»Mycket av det som många med mig trodde var välfärdsstatens kris på 1990-talet visade sig vara något som mer hängde ihop med felvärderad växelkurs och dålig makroregim än med grundläggande strukturfel.«
Dan Josefsson ser tillbaka på korståget mot välfärden som skulle härda svenskarna i krisens och arbetslöshetens stålbad.
Ordfront nr 10/2005, 27/92005

I ett år nu har moderatkansliet försörjt politiska reportrar och kommentatorer med en ström av promemorior. De har utgått från förhållandet att ungefär en miljon svenskar i arbetsför ålder inte försörjer sig på arbetsmarknaden.
Utgångspunkten är alltså att det finns en mängd obesatta platser och att en rad människor är sjukskrivna trots att de kan arbeta. Till en del är detta naturligtvis sant, men bara till en del.
DN-ledare 28/9 2005
Med kommentar av Rolf Englund

Finland remaining the most competitive country World Economic Forum (WEF) said. It was followed by the US, Sweden, Denmark and Taiwan.
BBC 28/9 2005

As the latest World Economic Outlook from the International Monetary Fund notes, analysts have advanced two contrasting views of what is driving the global pattern of surpluses and deficit.
If the postponed adjustment ultimately proves painful, however, let nobody dare say they were not warned.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times 21/9 2005
Very Important article, with link to IMF and comment by Rolf Englund

Äntligen!
In my remarks today I plan to focus on one of the key factors driving the U.S. economy in recent years: the sharp rise in housing valuations and the associated buildup in mortgage debt.
Alan Greenspan, September 26, 2005.

In Lisbon on Saturday, I shared a panel with French philospher and author Bernhard-Henri Levy discussing the present state of Europe and our position in the wider world. Tomorrow I'm heading to Paris to share a panel with former European Commission President Jaques Delors to discuss how Europe can overcome its present crisis.
Carl Bildt blog 25/9 2005

Classical economic theory suggests that interest rates automatically bring saving and investment into a productive balance.
The central principle of Keynesianism, however, is that this alignment between saving and investment is not always automatic, and that a misalignment can have serious consequences.

The Economist, Survey The World Economy, 22/9 2005

I am a bit more cautious than most about projecting a massive boom if Germany implements efficiency enhancing reforms.
The link between reform and growth is not obvious in the short-run. The dislocations associated with efficiency enhancing reforms (efficiency enhancing reform is economese for making it easier to fire people among other things ... ) can dampen consumer spending, as workers worry that they may lose their job and start to save more.

I do think Germany needs to do more to prepare for a world where the US no longer supports global demand growth, and to make sure the German government's future commitments are commensurate with its resources.
Brad Setser blog 15/9 2005

There are those dollar bears who just keep wondering when will the dollar crash? The answer, of course, is when people stop buying it.
Contrary to an overwhelming consensus view in late-2004 that central banks were diversifying wholesale from USD assets, the latest report from the IMF points to exactly the opposite: the share of USD assets in total reserve holdings increased in both nominal and real terms, while there were signs of diversification from EURs in relative terms.
Understand, I am long-term bearish on the dollar, but this view has the potential to be a long drawn out march.
John Mauldin 23/9 2005

Eventually, global balance must be restored through slower spending-growth in America compared with that in the rest of the world.
But no one is sure where the limits lie, nor how painful the ultimate adjustment will be.
Will American consumers slow their spending first, or will foreigners first tire of lending America money?
Will the shifts be sudden or gradual? And will spending elsewhere pick up the slack?
The Economist 22/9 2005

Jag ställde frågan hur Lars Calmfors kunde tänka sig att den strukturella arbetslösheten skulle minska genom att öka utbudet av arbetskraft.
Danne Nordling 22/9 2005

Villy Bergström har i sin bok "Kapitalbildning och industriell demokrati" utvecklat tankarna om löntagarägda företag och branschfonder
VB uttrycker det så att fackföreningarna inte får någon motpart - är det lätt att inse att riskerna för en utveckling mot något som ändå liknar östatssocialism, är betydande. VB, som är en hederlig vetenskapsman, döljer inte att en möjlig utvecklingsväg är i riktning mot socialism. Han låter sig emellertid icke avskräckas av detta, utan konstaterar bara att hur det kommer att gå naturligtvis beror av den framtida politiska utvecklingen här i landet.
Rolf Englund första löntagarfondsartikel, 1974.
Peter Wolodarski TV 8 frågade Villy om boken:
Villy Bergström & Kurt Wickman: Bilder från Nordkorea. (Tiden, 1972)

"Jag vågade inte säga vad jag trodde"
På morgonen den 19 november 1992 satt Villy Bergström, då LO-ekonom, och funderade på hur han skulle ducka för tv-teamets frågor om att kronan skulle släppas fri.
DN Ekonomi 19/11 2002

Det är förfärligt det som har hänt i många europeiska länder under de senaste åren. Folken sviker sina ledare. Etablissemanget kan inte längre räkna på blind lydnad från den råa hopen.
Svenskarna röstade emot euron och gav så sätt vårt lands politiska och ekonomiska eliter en rejäl örfil. Fransmän och holländare sade nej tack till EU-konstitutionen och försatte därmed hela unionen i en välbehövlig kris.
Carl Rudbeck, Timbros Smedjan, 20/9 2005

VOTERS OF GERMANY, I salute you! On Sunday you delivered a fair, constructive and intelligent verdict on your political class.
The fact that all respectable commentators in the German and European establishment agreed in declaring this election to have been an utter disaster — “the worst of all possible outcomes” is the cliché of the hour — merely confirms the democracy’s main premise:
the collective wisdom of the people is usually wiser than the conventional wisdom of a self-regarding elite.
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, September 22, 2005

Angela Merkel
Why a science degree and a handbag are not enough for the new Iron Lady
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, September 8, 2005

The new German government’s deflationary macroeconomic policies will sabotage potentially favourable results of supply-side reforms.
The need for mutual support between pro-competitive supply-side reforms and expansionary macroeconomic policies should be obvious to anyone with an understanding of Keynesian economics.
It has been amply demonstrated in practice — positively by the success of the US and UK economies since the mid-1980s and negatively by the consistent forecasting failures of the pre-Keynesian economic flat-earthers of the European Central Bank
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, September 19, 2005

A girl with symptoms of bird flu died in a Jakarta hospital on Wednesday as the Indonesian government announced it would carry out mass culling of poultry in high-risk areas
A US government fact-finding team from the Centers for Disease Control and Protection and other agencies arrived in Jakarta on Sunday.
Financial Times 21/9 2005

The most lethal human epidemics - including the three great flu pandemics of the 20th century - have all involved germs crossing the species barrier from birds and animals to people. Many microbiologists say a combination of four factors makes influenza potentially the most dangerous of all known viruses:
It crosses the species barrier readily, it can be very virulent, killing a high proportion of those infected, it is highly contagious, spreading rapidly between people, and it mutates fast into more dangerous strains.
Financial Times Briefing 23/8 2005

In his testimony to Congress on July 20, 2005, Mr. Greenspan declared it quite likely that the world is currently experiencing a global savings glut. Agreeing with Ben Bernanke, he mentioned this glut as one of the factors behind the so-called interest conundrum, i.e., declining long-term rates despite rising short-term rates.
Having read a lot from the Fed's luminaries, their inability to distinguish between rampant global credit excess and a global savings glut does not surprise us.
Kurt Richebächer, 17/9 2005

The oil industry is bracing for a disaster as Hurricane Rita hit Category 4, with the potential to reach Category 5, and heads towards energy infrastructure in Texas.
"If (Rita) keeps going on its current path, it's going to basically destroy the rest of the (energy complex Hurricane) Katrina didn't," Matthew Simmons, CEO of independent energy investment bank Simmons & Co. International, told CNBC's "Squawk Box."
CNBC 21/9 2005

My conversations quickly exposed a deep fault among the conference attendees. Those who analyzed or forecast the U.S. domestic macroeconomy agreed that a steep decline in the value of the dollar sometime in the next five years was overwhelmingly likely, but by and large they did not think that such a decline would pose a big problem for the U.S. economy.
By contrast, those who analyzed or forecast the international economy as a whole were typically terrified by the prospect of a steep (30% or more, perhaps much more) decline in the value of the dollar: they thought a severe U.S. recession was a definite possibility, and that the situation would require exceptionally skillful handling to keep from becoming a serious economic problem.
Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal, 15/9 2005
Very important article

I suspect the stock of outstanding synthetic credit derivatives - $ 1500 b in synthetic CDOs in 2004 v. $300 b or so in 2001, is the only thing than has increased more rapidly than China's reserves over the past few years.
China's reserves are probably above $800b now, up from $165b in 2000.
Brad Setser 18/9 2005

The Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 went to a psychologist, Dr. Daniel Kahneman, who helped pioneer the field of behavioral finance. He basically shows that investors are irrational.
But what gets him a Nobel is he shows that we are predictably irrational.
We continue to make the same mistakes over and over.
John Mauldin, 26/8 2005

Den svenska massarbetslösheten fordrar ett omfattande reformprogram som bygger om socialförsäkringarna, sänker skatterna på arbetsinkomster, uppmuntrar företagande och ökar flexibiliteten på arbetsmarknaden.
DN-ledare 19/9 2005

The Texas energy specialist, Matthew Simmons, has suggested that the world derives false comfort from Saudi Arabian assurances of willingness to increase production to meet consumer shortfalls (Twilight in the Desert, Wiley).
He argues that Saudi production is close to its peak sustainable volume and is likely to go into decline in the foreseeable future.

Samuel Brittan, Financial Times, 16 2005

The US current account deficit shrank to $195.7 billion from April through June, from a revised record $198.7
The second-quarter deficit is the second-highest ever and twice as much as it was four years ago.
Bloomberg 16/9 2005

If investors in index-linked bond market were genuinely that fearful about the future, current equity prices would be hard to justify.
Once the higher possibility of extreme events is included in a valuation model that balances the returns that investors require against the risks they are prepared to accept, Mr Miles found the current yields on index linked government bonds of below 2 per cent extremely difficult to justify.
Chris Giles, Economics Editor, Financial Times, 12/9 2005

Twenty years after the Plaza Agreement agreed co-ordinated intervention among the leading economies to reduce the value of the US dollar
The world’s largest banks and financial institutions on Wednesday urged the leaders of the global economy to act together to reduce “increasingly worrisome” global economic imbalances.
The tone of the IIF’s letter indicates that private sector financial institutions are increasingly concerned about rapidly growing trade deficits in the US with corresponding surpluses in Europe, Asia and among oil exporters.
Financial Times 15/9 2005

The U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly narrowed to $57.9 billion in July
Imports in July fell to $164.2 billion.
Exports climbed to $106.2 billion.

"It's the sunny side to slower consumer spending."
Bloomberg 13/9 2005

From Goldilocks to stagflation.
Real bond yields are extremely low already, suggesting that bond markets are already factoring in a significant slowdown in economic growth. However, bond markets are not yet priced for a significant pick-up in consumer price inflation.
Joachim Fels, Morgan Stanley, 14/9 2005

The runaway budget deficits are compounded by the persistent and growing imbalance in our trade accounts -- jeopardizing the inflow of foreign funds we have used to finance our debt.
At a private dinner the other evening where many of the men and women who have steered economic and fiscal policy during the past two decades were expressing their alarm about this situation, one speaker summarized the feelings of the group:
"I think it's 1925," he said, "and we're headed for 1929."
David S. Broder, Washington Post 11/9 2005

En arbetstidsförkortning med 25 procent leder till att 33 procent fler eller 400 000 personer måste anställas i den offentliga sektorn.
Det kostar idag 160 miljarder kronor och motsvarar 12 kr i kommunalskatt.
För den som tjänar 25 000 kr/år blir det 36 000 kr i skattehöjning eller en standardsänkning med 18 procent.
Danne Nordling blog 12/9 2005

Dollar crashes, interest rates fall?
Alan Greenspan's legacy may hinge on whether that headline is written, or whether the headline reads:
"Dollar crashes, interest rates surge."

Brad Setser's Web Log, 26/8 2005

Comment at Setser site by Rolf Englund:
If, or rather when, the dollar falls, import prices will go up. US firms will find it easier to raise prices, inflation goes up. Real rates are already low. Why should that not lead to rising bond yields and collapsing bond markets? But what else should you buy? Euros? Interesting times are ahead of us.
Rolf Englund, 2005-09-12

China daily is reporting that China's exchange rate will fluctuate more widely
"In line with the change in control method, the range of the renminbi's exchange rate fluctuation should expand. So there is no need to rely on administrative adjustments"
Michael Shedlock blog 9/9 2005

Lars Heikensten, 55
Utvecklingen i euroområdet har ju varit mer problematisk än jag trodde. Därför tror jag att ett EMU-beslut i Sverige dröjer.
Men om våra grannar Polen och de baltiska länderna går med kandet förändra mycket
Intervjuad i DN av Disa Håstad inför sin födelsedag, 11/9 2005

För tio år sedan trädde en reform inom psykiatrin i kraft. Psykiskt sjuka människor skulle få större möjligheter att vara delaktiga i samhällslivet. Kommunernas ansvar för att utveckla boendeformer och sysselsättning för människor i målgruppen klargjordes
Det har inte fungerat så bra.
RE: Carl Bildt undertecknade propositionen
SvD-ledare 10/9 2005

If the dollar dives, what will happen to America's interest rates?
When policymakers and pundits debate America's current-account deficit, the phrase “hard landing” is never far from their minds.
If inflationary expectations are falling, the link between tumbling currencies and rising bond yields may be weakened.
The Economist print 8/9 2005
Rolf Englund: But if the dollar falls, inflation will probably rise as import prices increase, or...?

Almost all those saying the housing market is healthy told us the stock market was not in a bubble in 1999.
Eventually, things will return to trend.
It is simply implausible to believe housing starts can continue growing far faster than the number of households, that prices can continue rising far faster than incomes or that interest rates will stay historically low.
Bruce Bartlett, Washington Times, September 7, 2005

En stigande export till USA är vad som håller i gång både Asien och Europa. I längden är detta ohållbart,
För amerikanska hushåll är det kännbart när bensinen som nu har kommit upp i ett pris som motsvarar över sex kronor per liter.
Johan Schück, DN 10/9 2005

Remember the run-up to the popping of the technology stock bubble in March 2000.
As easy money, which the Federal Reserve itself provided, drove up stock prices, we got lectures on irrational exuberance.
Now, belatedly, the Federal Reserve has decided to warn us that housing prices are getting worryingly high
Jim Jubak, senior markets editor for MSN Money, 9/9 2005

Psykiatrireformen
Många psykiskt sjuka får inte den hjälp de behöver. Bristfälliga handlingsplaner, usel samverkan och låg personalkompetens präglar kommunernas arbete, enligt Socialstyrelsens kartläggning.
Enligt Socialstyrelsens beräkningar får nästan hälften av landets 35 000 psykiskt sjuka i dag ingen hjälp alls av kommunerna. Många kastas ut i hemlöshet.
Politiken.se 9/9 2005

A drop in the U.S. savings rate by 1.7 percentage points, while seemingly small, actually represents a substantial contribution to consumption growth of about $175 billion or 2 percentage points.
More broadly, about one-third of the 3.9 percent growth rate in gross domestic product (GDP) over the past year was accounted for by the elimination of what was already low U.S. saving.
John Makin, American Enterprise Intstitute, September 2005

Even the unflappable Bank for International Settlements (BIS) seems uneasy. In its quarterly report released on Monday September 5th, it gives warning that
“the complexity of some products and the associated risk-management systems, the growing presence of leveraged players in credit markets and the possibility that investment strategies may be less diverse than anticipated make it difficult to predict how credit markets will function under more stressful conditions.”
IMF’s economic counsellor, Raghuram Rajan: While recent changes in the financial system have made it more stable most of the time, they may also have increased the possibility that it will be excessively unstable in really bad times, as well as increasing the chances that really bad times will occur. We will not know how big the risks are, or what to do to mitigate them, until the system has been tested. “The danger,” he writes, “is that before the economy is stress-tested, it will be hit unexpectedly by a perfect storm.”
Buttonwood, The Economist 6/9 2005

Vad förklarar att USA de senaste 15 åren haft dubbelt så hög årlig produktivitetsökning per timme som EU, samtidigt som USA skapat 18 miljoner nya arbetstillfällen mot EU:s 2,2 miljoner?
Peter Stein, Timbros Smedjan, 1/9 2005

In the macro world, strikes, wars, and natural disasters have long been thought of as classic exogenous shocks -- those out-of-the-blue disruptions that jolt economies and markets.
But the energy shock of 2005 may be of a very different breed. It could well be an endogenous shock -- an unfortunate outgrowth of excesses that have been building in the macro system for a long time.
Stephen Roach, 5/9 2005

"Livbolagen går mot ljusare tider"
Det finns dock ett hot kvar mot några av de ekonomiskt svaga bolagen.
Det är den låga räntan. Låg ränta kan tvinga fram ytterligare en sänkning av den så kallade högsta ränta, en ränta som används för att beräkna värdet på försäkringsbolagens åtaganden gentemot spararna.
DN 4/9 2005

700 bn dollar
Deflated by US consumer prices, the price of a barrel of oil is now higher than at any other time over the past 35 years, except during the shock that followed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran
Martin Wolf 7/9 2005

Schröder did a statesman-like explanation of the geostrategic importance of integrating Turkey with the rest of the European Union, which made Merkels resistance on this issue look rather pedestrian.
pedestrian = lacking in vitality, imagination, distinction, etc.; commonplace; prosaic or dull: a pedestrian commencement speech.
Carl Bildt blog 4/9 2005

- I den politiska debatten gör båda sidor sitt bästa för att blanda bort korten.
De borgerliga vill sänka bidragen till arbetslösa, men nämner inte att detta också skulle driva ner de lägsta lönerna
Socialdemokraterna vill inte medge att dagens ersättningsnivå från a-kassan är ett hinder för att öka sysselsättningen, utan låtsas att man kan få allt på samma gång.
Lars Calmfors, DN 7/9 2005

Det är bara när det gäller arbetslösheten som politikerna inte kommer med "skarpa" förslag.
Danne Nordling blog 2/9 2005

Mikael Gennser:
President Bush declared a state of emergency in Louisianna the 26th of August (ie days before the hurricane hit the Gulf coast) and released federal funds to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
Unfortunately the governor of Louisiana and Mayor of N. O. refused to cooperate. See statement by Senator Dr. Bill Frist, who is currently helping victims with medical needs around New Orleans.
It was President Bush who asked the Mayor of NO and the Governor of LA to start the evacuation. This was admitted in a press conference by Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin on Sunday the 28th August. The statement that President Bush had called and personally appealed for the mandatory evacuation for the city was reported on several TV channels and newspapers including the Guardian.
Further comments hardly necessary.

The breakdown of order in New Orleans, the looting and the mobs, the state of emergency and shoot-to-kill policy, do not look like something that should happen in the world's only superpower.
Financial Times, September 3, 2005

With hindsight, it seems obvious that building a city for 500,000 people in a bowl-shaped depression below sea level on a coast of the US known for hurricanes was tempting fate.
Financial Times editorial, September 3 2005

Between 1990 and 2000 the US’s Hispanic population grew by 61 per cent: this year, America’s 41m Latinos overtook blacks to become the nation’s largest minority
Financial Times 29/8 2005

70 dollar per fat är
3:30 kr per liter

Rolf Englund 1/9 2005

U.S. home prices leapt 13.4% in the second quarter from a year earlier, the largest gain in 25 years
It compares with average annual increases of about 6% in the past three decades.
Wall Street Journal 2/9 2005

The Katrina Crisis
What makes it an integrated crisis is that the entire energy supply system in the region has been disabled, and that the parts all depend upon each other for recovery. If the next weeks reveal that the losses are as large as some fear, this would constitute perhaps the biggest energy shocks since the 1970s
Mr. Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, is author of "The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" (Free Press, 1993).
Daniel Yergin, Wall Street Journal, September 2, 2005

It is too early to conclude that Mr Greenspan handled the stockmarket bubble successfully.
Having cut interest rates so hard, Mr Greenspan is leaving the economy with record current-account and household financial deficits and America's biggest housing bubble ever.
The Economist 1/9 2005

Historical experience argues that monetary policy should be the first line of defence against both slump and inflationary boom.
Unfortunately, we cannot just leave matters here. It is easy to envisage situations in which both monetary and fiscal policy would be necessary to achieve a modicum of stability
Samuel Brittan, Financial Times 2/9 2005

We recently marked the fifth anniversary of the peak of the great millennial stock market Bubble.
From the March 2000 top to the October 2002 trough, the U.S. stock market gave up more than half of its value, some $9.2 trillion.
Aubie Baltin, august 2005

In some areas hardest hit by the disruption, $3-per-gallon gas has already become a fond memory in less than a week
RE: Bensinen i USA kostar nu sex kronor litern
CNBC 1/9 2005

The most important development this year is the establishment of bird flu infection among wild birds - waterfowl in particular. This increases the risk that avian migrations will carry the virus around the world.
The more widely it spreads, the greater the chance of it mutating somewhere to a form that transmits easily between people
FT’s science editor, Clive Cookson 31/8 2005

Chairman Alan Greenspan's Fed has already contributed to higher oil and commodity prices by keeping monetary policy too loose for too long in 2003 and 2004.
This is beginning to show itself in rising consumer prices this year and is likely to continue to do so in the coming months.
Wall Street Journal editorial 1/9 2005

Many say the final assessment of Greenspan's tenure as Fed chairman will not be written until it is clear how the possible housing market bubble is resolved.
"The question is, how do we get out of this alive?"
Gregg Rob, Market Watch 24/8 2005

Why are oil prices so high?
Are oil prices high? At $60 a barrel, oil is priced at 18 cents a pint! Yes that is correct: 18 cents a pint. You can not buy water for 18 cents a pint.
End of the Oil Era

Konjunkturinstitutets chef Ingemar Hansson:
Vad som behöver göras för att höja sysselsättningen är alldeles klart, menar han. Det behövs en bättre integration av utrikes födda, färre sjukskrivna och färre förtidspensionärer
DN 29/8 2005

One way or another, the economy will eventually eliminate both imbalances.
But if the process doesn't go smoothly - if, in particular, the housing bubble bursts before the trade deficit shrinks - we're going to have an economic slowdown, and possibly a recession.
In fact, a growing number of economists are using the "R" word for 2006
Paul Krugman, New York Times, August 29, 2005

Konjunkturfall kan vara av tre slag, som ibland inträffar samtidigt och förstärker varandra: normal lågkonjunktur, externa chocker som krig eller terrorangrepp och politiska misstag som det svenska kronförsvaret i början av 1990-talet.
Metro 29/8 2005

- De befriade sig från en bunker men fick en borg
"anonym moderat redaktör"

The supply of homes on the market now stands at 2.75 million - the highest since May 1988.
New-home inventories have grown about 15% since July 2004, to 460,000, the highest level since the Commerce Department started tracking new homes in 1963
Bill Fleckenstein, CNBC, 29/8 2005

Arbetslinjen, kallas det. Resonemanget känns igen från snart sagt alla moderata utspel på senare tid. Många ska arbeta mycket och länge, lyder det moderata beskedet. Det är förstås ett angeläget budskap i ett land där allt fler arbetar allt mindre.
Men att göra den samlade volymen av arbetsutbud till den stora politiska visionen blir blodfattigt och torftigt.
SvD-ledare 29/8 2005

Den stora fastighetsbubblan för femton år sedan drog med sig hela den svenska ekonomin.
Olle Wästbergs nyhetsbrev 28 augusti 2005

Det har blivit populärt att tala om finanspolitiska stimulanser, d v s ökade offentliga utgifter eller skattesänkningar för att stimulera ekonomin.
Då borde arbetslösheten minska, men det gör den inte. Alltså är våra totala resurser dåligt utnyttjade och den gamla keynesianska konjunkturteorin säger att staten bör stimulera.
Det är en livsfarlig politik.
Olle Wästbergs nyhetsbrev 28 augusti 2005

Med fonderna tar vi över. Det var LO-tidningens huvudnyhet från LO-kongressen 1976
SvD-ledare 27/8 2005

H

By Andrew Balls In Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Greenspan warns on impact of asset prices
Financial Times, August 26 2005 15:37

By Andrew Balls In Jackson Hole, Wyoming
Another challenge for the next Fed chairman will be dealing with the US's unprecedented current account deficit, which stands at 6 per cent of GDP and rising.
Financial Times, August 26 2005

H5N1 avian influenza – first steps towards development of a human vaccine
WHO 12 August 2005

I just googled "house price bubbles"
and found my page as number 13 of about 765.000
RE/August 26, 2005

At issue is whether financial innovations that have made it easier for Americans to buy homes have also made the system less stable and more subject to shocks that could drive many from their homes.
Floyd Norris, New York Times, August 26, 2005

Investors are not even aware of their incapacity to take action to prepare for a sharply declining market.
Herding is a natural instinct
Doug Wakefield, August 25, 2005

Since Alan Greenspan took office as Fed chairman, it has taken an average of $3.60 of debt growth to generate $1 of nominal gross domestic product growth
And, while he has used rhetoric on occasion to warn of the dangers of fiscal deficits, his policies have supported the more than doubling of government debt over his reign.
K. R. Duncan, Financial Times, 26/8 2005

Moderatledaren har vänt ett parti som suttit fast i gamla dogmer till att tänka om och tänka nytt från grunden. Det har lett till både en mer realistisk politik och ett ökat väljarstöd
Man kan se hela Fredrik Reinfeldts tal som riktat till dem som saknar de vidlyftiga skattesänkningarna, skrotningen av Ams och arbetsrätten och den trosvissa övertygelsen om en enda väg.
Dagens Industri, ledare 26/8 2005

Fågelinfluensan närmar sig Europa.
Vår beredskap mot en sådan pandemi är god, påstår regeringen.
Folkhälsominister Morgan Johansson har lovat att alla ska få ett fullgott skydd. Det är än så länge ett tunt löfte.
Aftonbladet-ledare 25/8 2005

Roche Gives WHO 3M Doses of Bird Flu Drug
The antiviral oseltamivir, known commercially as Tamiflu, is the only treatment proven to be effective in humans against bird flu.
Washington Post/AP, August 24, 2005

What is Voice-over-IP?
Companies such as Skype, Vonage and now Google, offer a new way of making phone calls over the internet.
The main attraction is the price: national and international calls can be made cheaply; sometimes even for free.
Kate Mackenzie, Financial Times 24/8 2005

Ekonomin är för stel för att skapa ordentligt med nya jobb när det går uppåt, och i stället för att mjuka upp strukturerna vill regeringen mjuka upp statsfinanserna.
SvD-ledare 2005

Nu sällar sig professor Lars Jonung, expert i Bryssel och tidigare rådgivare åt statsminister Bildt, till kritikerna av Lindbeck och Feldt.
Jonung intar samma ståndpunkt som under Bildt-regeringens tid - inga konkreta förklaringar till hur de nya jobben skulle komma till stånd. Och utvecklingen av de fem tyngsta komponenterna i den verkliga arbetslösheten 1990-94 var en ökning med 58 procent när Jonung var rådgivare.
Danne Nordling blog 21/8 2005

Nu i augusti är det exakt 30 år sedan Rudolf Meidner kom med sitt förslag om att införa löntagarfonder i Sverige.
Vad hade hänt om löntagarfonder hade införts?
Fredrik Erixon och Per Hortlund, Timbro-skrift augusti 2005

US existing home sales dropped 2.6% to an annual rate of 7.16 million.
The median price of a home in July was $218,000, up 14% from the same month a year ago.
CNBC 23/8 2005

The writer is professor of economics at Harvard University. He is a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund
There is a curious disconnection between what most academics see as the limits of monetary policy and the popular conception of Mr Greenspan’s wide-sweeping power.
Newer theories, following up the Nobel laureates’ early work, have resuscitated an important role for monetary policy, albeit a narrower one than Keynes’ postwar followers once imagined.
Kenneth Rogoff, Financial Times, August 24 2005

U.S. Trade Gap Widens as Oil Soars
In June grew 6.1% to $58.82 billion
U.S. imports rose 2.1% to a record $165.65 billion
American exports, at $106.83 billion, showed little growth.
Wall Street Journal 15/8 2005

The start of the post-oil age does not begin when the last drop of oil is sucked from under the Arabian desert. It begins when producers are unable to continue increasing their output to meet rising demand.
Peter Maass, New York Times August 21, 2005

Renate Kunast, consumer protection minister, said: "We are preparing for a worst-case scenario."
German farmers could be ordered to keep flocks of poultry in pens to prevent contact with wild migratory birds arriving from central Asia, expected in mid-September.
Ms Kunast warned against panic, but called for preventive action across the European Union.
Financial Times 20/8 2005

In December 1996, when Alan Greenspan made his famous comment on the possibility of “irrational exuberance” in stock prices, the Dow Jones industrial average stood at 6,400
At its peak in 2000, the Dow hit 11,700. In the subsequent collapse, the index never returned to 1996 levels
Andrew Balls, Financial Times, August 22 2005

Handläggningstiden är för närvarande drygt 7 veckor
A-kassan Alfa 17/8 2005

It's nice to see that Stephen Roach is back from his summer vacation. In the first paragraph of his first missive since returning to his duties at Morgan Stanley, he reminds us once again, why he is our favorite economis
"On the surface, the global economy seems to be doing just fine. Yet just beneath that seemingly tranquil surface, the imbalances and tensions are only getting worse."
Tim Iacono 16/8 2005

Since December 2000 employment in U.S. manufacturing has fallen 17 percent, but /antalet fastighetsmäklare/ membership in the National Association of Realtors has risen 58 percent.
So it's an economy driven by real estate. What's wrong with that? One answer is that it has been a pretty disappointing recovery.
Paul Krugman, New York Times 12/8 2005

The contrast between the macro­economic management of the US and that of the eurozone during the past five years could not be greater
Where does this difference come from?
The practical men in Frankfurt have become the slaves of a theory telling us that the sources of economic cycles are shocks in technology (productivity shocks) and changes in preferences.
Paul de Grauwe, Financial Times 17/8 2005

The news that the U.S. housing bubble is over won't come in the form of plunging prices
it will come in the form of falling sales and rising inventory, as sellers try to get prices that buyers are no longer willing to pay.
And the process may already have started.
Paul Krugman New York Times 8/8 2005

The price of crude oil is not only reaching new heights in nominal terms but approaching the record real levels seen in 1979.
There are three main areas that are generating new concern about the outlook for oil prices: context, supply and the effects on the world economy.
The writer is senior economic adviser at UBS Investment Bank
George Magnus, Financial Times, August 16 2005

Fears that lower interest rates could re-inflate Britain’s housing bubble.
Since 1997, house prices have risen by over 150%
The Economist 4/8 2005

En rad länder i västra Europa plågas av en ihållande ekonomisk kris. Arbetslösheten stiger och tillväxten sjunker. I Tyskland, Italien och Frankrike - liksom Sverige - tilltar svårigheterna trots god konjunktur och låg ränta.
Grundorsaken är den europeiska sociala modellen med höga skatter, omfattande bidrag och offentliga monopol.
I kris behövs en nationell valuta, vars ränta och växelkurs kan anpassa sig efter de nationella förhållandena, sägs det. Hur stor verkan för att stimulera ekonomin som penningpolitiken ger har dock allt mer börjat ifrågasättas.
Johnny Munkhammar SvD 5/8 2005

The IS-LM framework, invented by Sir John Hicks in 1937 as an interpretation of Keynes's “General Theory”
casts useful light on why bond yields are so low.
The Economist 11/8 2005

Central bankers - commentators urge them to put their foot on the accelerator, to tap the brakes, or to aim for a soft landing.
Yet in reality they have more in common with early sea-faring navigators.
The Economist 11/8 2005

A global pandemic of bird flu claiming millions of lives could be stopped if governments work together, say experts.
UK and US teams used computer models to work out the possible scenarios if the virus H5N1 mutated and became capable of spreading from human to human. The result could be deaths on the scale of the 1918 Spanish flu which claimed between 20 and 40 million lives.
BBC 3/8 2005

Perhaps I have influenced the Financial Times?
The next few months will be critical for the battle to avoid what could be a cataclysmic flu pandemic
Financial Times editorial 5/8 2005
See also: Cataclysm

The new chairman will need to make tough judgments on the housing sector.
Unfortunately, the Fed does not yet view this with alarm.
For the new chairman the question will be: can households continue to serve as a stabilising force in the next recession or have they already been marginalised by the household debt binge?
Henry Kaufman, Financial Times, 2/8 2005

the central bank has raised its Federal funds rate 25 basis points after each meeting
it has contributed to a massive carry trade – borrowing in low-yield funds to invest in higher-yielding ones

Henry Kaufman, Financial Times, 2/8 2005

Svenskt Näringslivs utspel om nödvändiga förändringar av reglerna för konflikter på arbetsmarknaden sätter återigen samförståndspolitiken på prov. Reportage om hur vattendelaren än en gång går mellan arbetarrörelse och arbetsgivare.
Löntagarfonderna
Godmorgon Världen 31/8 2005

The Fed’s recent monetary approach, combined with the US Treasury’s practice of confining much of its new borrowing to short- and intermediate-term notes, explains a great deal of what the Fed has dubbed a “conundrum”
Henry Kaufman, Financial Times, 2/8 2005

Flu viruses can swap many genes rapidly to make new resistant strains, US researchers have found.
BBC 26/7 2005

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- Bird flu has killed two more people in Vietnam
CNN July 29, 2005 with good links

Sedan en tid har det hävdats att Sveriges sysselsättningsproblem både beror på och skulle kunna lösas med finans- och penningpolitiska stimulanser.
Keynes är ett passerat kapitel och så bör det förbli.
SvD-ledare 29/7 2005

Under the names of "relativism" and "postmodernism", today's prevailing style of thought has it that we can believe what we like and that all beliefs are equally valid, because there is no such thing as truth or objectivity.
RE: Exempelvis, att en uppstoppad get med ett bildäck om sig kan vara konst...
A.C. Grayling, Financial Times, 23/7 2005

Tiny Singapore may have felt a sense of pride as China and Malaysia have adopted a version of its managed floating exchange rate system after abandoning their fixed currency pegs against the US dollar.
The “basket, band and crawl”, or BBC, system
Financial Times 22/7

Between 1995 and 1998, a number of investors participated in the great "Yen carry trade". For three years, it was fantastic
Räntearbitrage

GaveKal Research at John Mauldin 25/7 2005

Will China's float sink the housing bubble?
When asked by a member of the House Financial Services Committee last Wednesday if there would be any benefit in returning to the gold standard, Greenspan came up with one of the most incredible utterances in all his tenure:
"I don't think so, because ... since the late '70s, central bankers have behaved as though we were on the gold standard."
Bill Fleckenstein CNBC 25/7 2005

America’s trade deficit of $700bn is nine times China’s trade surplus.
Joseph Stiglitz, Financial Times, July 27 2005
The writer is University Professor at Columbia University and was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics in 2001

About statement by Lawrence Lindsey, a former Fed governor and Bush adviser
The textbook that Mr. Lindsey is of course referring to is the one that was written after the Great Depression. The one that says, if we are ever dumb enough to create another asset bubble like the one that preceded the Great Depression, let's inject enough money and credit into the system to make the magnitude of the bust much smaller than the magnitude of the boom.
That's where the textbook ends ... that's where we are today.

Tim Iacono, July 06, 2005

Watershed in global markets
The decision by China to abandon the renminbi-dollar peg in favour of a managed float marks the beginning of the end of the dollar recycling process whereby a large US current account deficit is substantially financed by Asian official reserves.
John Plender, Financial Times, July 25 2005

Pengarna från besparingarna använder moderaterna till förvärvsavdrag som är relativt sett mest betydelsefulla för låg- och medelinkomsttagare. Det är en operation som ytterligare ökar skillnaden mellan att arbeta och lyfta bidrag.
Någon förändring av efterfrågan och den totala jobbmängden blir det knappast. Möjligen kommer de redan sysselsatta att spara en del av skattesänkningen till skillnad mot bidragstagarna. Det kommer att minska efterfrågan något och sålunda öka arbetslösheten.
Dessvärre har vi inte fått någon ytterligare information om hur det skulle gå till när kanske 300 000 jobb skulle skapas med moderaternas politik.
Danne Nordling, blog 5/7 2005

Moderaterna vill se en utbudsexplosion på arbetsmarknaden genom stramare bidrag och lägre skatt på jobbinkomster.
Men partiet har få skarpa förslag som är inriktade på att öka den efterfrågan i ekonomin, som skulle möta det större utbudet.

Peter Wolodarski, DN 6/7 2005

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Whether it's a national bubble or just pockets of regional froth, an end to surge in home prices could inflict economic harm that would make the 2000 tech bust look tame in comparison.
CNN July 5th 2005

LOs kampanj "Jag/vi räddade Sverige"
Huvudpersonerna i kampanjen var Annika, handelsmedlem och ensamstående mamma, Anders, arbetslös byggnadsarbetare och Bibbi och Kenta, en lågavlönad barnfamilj.
LOs verksamhetsberättelse för 1998

Since credit cards were first issued and automobiles were first financed, bankers and car salesman have been more than happy to assist individuals in realizing their full borrowing potential. Realizing their full potential, that is, by borrowing more money than they really should.
We are living in what The Economist magazine calls "the biggest financial bubble in history"
What happens when real estate appreciation regresses to the mean

Tim Iacono July 1, 2005
RE: Higly readable and interesting

The debate has an eerie sense of déjà vu. Today, there are those who dispute the very existence of a US property bubble. Similarly, five years ago, there were many who argued that US equities were not over-valued
Five years ago, it was the equity bubble. Today, it’s the property bubble. These are not isolated events.
As night follows day, one bubble has spawned the next. And we have the Federal Reserve to thank for this grand continuum and the cumulative toll it is taking on the US economy. Sadly, as America lurches from bubble to bubble, the endgame is looking all the more treacherous.
Stephen Roach, June 24, 2005

Ett enda ämne dominerar amerikanernas samtal i dag, och det är inte Irak. Det är bostadsmarknaden.
Med jämna mellanrum hör jag berättelser som börjar så här:
”Min vän X köpte sitt hus 1999 för 300 000 dollar (motsvarande drygt 2,3 miljoner kronor). Nu har han precis sålt det för 700 000 dollar (motsvarande runt 5,5 miljoner).
Elisabeth Braw, Barometern 5/7 2005

First, let me confess my ignorance, I know very little about housing. However, I do know something about bubbles and something about psychology.
Frankly I am amazed there is even a debate. All I can see are signs of speculative excess.
James Montier, at John Mauldin, June 20, 2005

Statsminister Göran Persson har upprepat otaliga gånger att den borgerliga regeringen 1991–94 skapade en ekonomisk kris som han har fått reda upp
Varje ekonom vet att krisens rötter finns i 1970- och 80-talen.
Johnny Munkhammar, Expressen 29/6 2005

In 1896, Svante Arrhenius, the Nobel Prize-winning chemist, predicted that burning fossil fuels would increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and cause global warming. The recent statement from national science academies around the world confirms ­Arrhenius’s broad conclusion. It also shows that emissions of CO2 are disturbing the delicate balance of factors (such as sea temperature, salinity, currents, ice sheets and solar radiation) that maintained an exceptionally stable, gently warming climate over 8,000 years while human beings achieved the astonishing transformation that we call modern civilisation.
Lord Oxburgh, non-executive chairman of Shell Transport and Trading Financial Times 4/7 2005

Greenspan's most vehement critics are convinced he has made a fundamental error as a monetary economist.
The hairshirt economists vs. the cheerleaders for growth-is-good
Business Week 28/6 2005

"Is it a bird, is it a plane?"
Fears mount over China bird flu
H5N1 outbreak at Lake Qinghai was particularly worrying because it affected migratory birds, including gulls.
BBC 28/6 2005

Sammanlagt var 375 846 personer öppet arbetslösa eller i åtgärder.
Det innebär en minskning jämfört med föregående vecka med 127 personer och en ökning med 18 832 jämfört med förra året.
DN/TT 27/6 2005
RE: Hur många färre blir det om man sänker ersättningsnivåerna?
Hur ser den tänkta mekanismen härför ut?
Läs Reinfeldts svar här

The asset price bubbles are no accident.
They are a necessary component of the mechanism that generates the needed US demand.

Martin Wolf, Financial Times, June 29 2005

THE WORLD HITLER NEVER MADE:
Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism,
by Gavriel D. Rosenfeld, Cambridge University Press
Reviewd by Vernon Bogdanor,
Financial Times; May 28, 2005

The U.S. current account deficit is on track to reach seven percent of GDP in 2005. That figure is unprecedented for a major economy.
Yet modern-day Panglosses tell us not to worry: the world's greatest power, they say, can also be the world's greatest debtor.

"Our Money, Our Debt, Our Problem"
by Brad Setser and Nouriel Roubini, Foreign Affairs, July/August 2005

Investors recently had expressed optimism - some disbelief - that the market had stood face to face with record crude-oil prices and barely blinked.
This week, however, the market didn't just blink; it fell to pieces as the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 325.23 points, or 3.1%.
Blue chips fell each day this week, most of the losses coming Thursday and Friday.
Wall Street Journal 24/6 2005

Om Linux på svenska

OpenOffice.org Writer vs. Microsoft Word
Bruce Byfield, Newsforge, June 22, 2005

Twilight in the Desert:
The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy
Matthew R. Simmons, SCI, April 12, 2005
Highly recommended

Borgarna var långt ifrån ensamma om ansvaret för krisen, men det var ändå Bildt & Wibble som tvingades administrera den och låna upp dessa hundratals miljarder för att täcka underskotten.
Niklas Ekdal, signerat DNs ledarsida 23/6 2005

The increasing attention paid to growing U.S. current account deficits has bred nightmare scenarios of a sharp decline in the foreign-exchange value of the dollar and rising U.S. interest rates.
Financial markets, by contrast, appear more sanguine. Inflation-indexed bonds in the U.S. are yielding only about 1.5% in real terms, and the IMF's estimate of the long-term world real interest rate is about 2%.
Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School, was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush,
Wall Street Journal, 23/6 2005

The 'Conundrum' Explained
Believe it or not, comparable rates outside the U.S. are even lower than ours
Roger C. Altman, Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2005

The IEA argues that remaining oil reserves could cover only 70 years at the average annual consumption between 2003 and 2030.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 22/6 2005

Lars Heikensten:
- På finansdepartementet uppfattade vi inte att de kraftiga prishöjningarna på fastigheter kunde leda till något problem
Ur Nerikes Allehanda 11 februari 1993

Lars Heikensten:
- Det finns ingen anledning att kasta in handduken i kampen om kronan.
Förutsättningarna att få svensk ekonomi på fötter under de närmaste två åren är goda.

Ur Dagens Nyheter 1 oktober 1992

The US current account deficit at record high
$195.1bn in the first quarter of 2005

6.4 % of GDP
BBC 17/6 2005

How the current housing boom ends could decide the course of the entire world economy over the next few years.
Soaring house prices have given a huge boost to the world economy. What happens when they drop?
The Economist print 16/6 2005

Strange things are happening in the world economy: falling interest rates on long-term ­securities, declining spreads between returns on safe and riskier assets, large fiscal deficits and huge global current account “imbalances” should not, in normal circumstances, coincide. So what is going on?
The answer, in a nutshell, is a global excess of desired savings against the background of weak investment, low ­inflation and ever more integrated economies.
To understand the present we need to go back to the 1930s. The “paradox of thrift” was the most counterintuitive and, to the classically trained ­economist, morally, theoretically and practically objectionable idea in John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936, in response to the Great Depression.
Martin Wolf Financial Times June 13 2005

Coming in at $3 billion less than some had feared, today's release of April's $57 billion trade deficit is being heralded as good news. The fact that the fourth worst monthly deficit ever is considered good news is startling evidence of just how far the bar has been lowered when it comes to America's deteriorating trade imbalance.
While China enjoys an enormous trade surplus with the United States, it enjoys a significant trade deficit with the rest of the world.
If America's monthly trade deficits continue at the "benign" level of 57 billion for the rest of the year, the annual 2005 deficit will top $685 billion, 11% higher than last year's record $617 deficit, and approximately 6% of GDP.
Peter Schiff June 13, 2005

U.S. exports advanced 3.0%
The U.S. trade deficit widened to $57 billion in April as Americans paid record prices for oil and bought more goods from China
Imports rose 4.1%
10/6 2005

Cutting rates so low for so long Mr. Greenspan turned a slump into a residential property bubble. If he were to "normalize" rates, the bubble would pop.
Then comes the real emergency.

Bill Bonner 9/6 2005
Bill Bonner is the author, with Addison Wiggin, of
Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of The 21st Century.

Cataclysm
What might happen if Rolf Englunds and others warnings
turn out to be right
Click

Mr. Greenspan told Congress's Joint Economic Committee.
Mr. Greenspan also focused on new risks to the economic outlook, specifically high housing prices.
The Fed said the value of all U.S. housing climbed 15% in the first quarter from a year earlier, and mortgage debt rose 13%, both easily outstripping the 6% gain in after-tax income over the same period.

Wall Street Journal 10/6 2005

In Treating U.S. After Bubble, Fed Helped Create New Threats
Low Rates Bolstered Economy, But Housing, Foreign Debt Appear Out of Balance
Greenspan's Legacy at Stake
Greg Ip, Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2005

A few years ago only a handful of geologists and academics were considering such a possibility.
Is global oil production reaching a peak?
A French government report on the global oil industry forecasts a possible peak in world production as early as 2013.
BBC 10/6 2005

Jim Grant reported some fascinating numbers in his latest issue of Grant's Interest Rate Observer.
Jim says that from 1983 to 1998, housing sales stayed relatively constant, representing between 8% and 10% of GDP.
As of the latest numbers, home sales are at 17%.

For the statisticians out there, that's 3.4 standard deviations from the mean.
Dr. Steve Sjuggerud June 6, 2005

The interest rate conundrum is challenging enough. But now the dollar is springing back to life in the face of America’s record current account deficit.
In my view, this defies both the history and the analytics of the classic current account adjustment.
Stephen Roach 3/6 2005

Stephen Roach turns 180 degrees
I now suspect bond yields will stay low for the foreseeable future
I continue to believe this is ultimately a recipe for disaster.
Stephen Roach May 31, 2005

Steven B. Schnall, the president of the New York Mortgage Company:
pointed to continued low interest rates as the most important factor in the market. "I don't see prices continuing to skyrocket," he said. "They've reached a very high level and this almost appears to be a new normal, and interest rates are helping that."
Flashback ... "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."--Irving Fisher, esteemed economist, October 1929
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis 7/6 2005

I am going to write here about a coming depression in general terms. I have some suggestions for how to prepare.
There are two types of depressions, hyperinflationary and deflationary. The end results are the same.
Chris Laird Gold Eagle May 15 2005

Anders Björnsson och Nord-Korea
Politiken.se 26/5 2005 (med länkar av RE)

The US Trade Deficit is Unsustainable, Bud Conrad
Nice charts

The low interest rates that rescued us from the last recession might be the cause of the next
William Rhodes, senior vice chairman of Citigroup, puts it this way: "The speculation here is more evident than people seem to realize. . . . I've seen this movie."
Robert J. Samuelson, June 2, 2005

Economists are reading the wrong fairy tale.
This isn't a "Goldilocks" economy - not too hot, not too cold. Instead, it's more like "The Emperor's New Clothes."
The emperor, in this case, is Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan.
Allan Murray Wall Street Journal 1/6 2005

It's Not a Bubble Until It Bursts
The chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers Assn. is worried enough about the torrid housing market to get out of it.
"I'm going to rent for a while," said Douglas Duncan

However, none of the experts or novices knows for sure when and how a bubble might burst.
David Streitfeld Los Angeles Times 29/5 2005

House of Cards?
If Rates Don't Kill the Boom, What Will?
Mark Gongloff Wall Street Journal May 27, 2005

The home price boom in the U.S. has had a peculiar form since it began in the late 1990s:
Home price increases have been getting stronger and stronger each year, year after year.
Robert J. Schiller Wall Street Journal June 2, 2005

Remember the stock market bubble?
A few pessimists argue that we have not yet paid the price for our past excesses.
I've never fully accepted that view. But looking at the housing market, I'm starting to reconsider.
In July 2001, Paul McCulley, an economist at Pimco, the giant bond fund, predicted that the Federal Reserve would simply replace one bubble with another.
Paul Krugman New York Times 27/5 2005

Grumpy Old Men
Missa inte TV-serien härom

“If something cannot go on forever,”
said Herb Stein, “it will stop.”

The subject of this now-famous dictum by the late chairman of Richard Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers was a balance-of-payments crisis stemming from the dollar’s exchange rate, which was then at an unsustainably high level.
Sound familiar?
The Economist 25/5 2005

Let us think the unthinkable:
Could the eurozone disintegrate?
The answer is yes.

If /Italy/ fails to rise to the challenge it confronts, a default or even a forced withdrawal from the eurozone is perfectly conceivable.
Martin Wolf Financial Times 25/5 2005

"The Strange Tale of the Bare-Bottomed King."
Future finance-based consumption is limited by our ability to keep pumping lower and lower yields, which in the past have led to higher and higher TIPS, home, stock, and associated asset prices.
Bill Gross, Pimco May 2005

Although France's three biggest political parties, the mainstream media, the business establishment, and much of the cultural elite have been in favour of the constitution, the No camp has remained firmly ahead
(Internet and blogs)
Financial Times 27/5 2005

US Home sales soar to record,
reaching 7.18 million annual rate.
CNN 24/5 2005

US Home prices jumped about 15% from a year ago,
the biggest jump in 25 years.

CNBC 25/4 2005

We have seen what 20 million people of Taiwan can achieve in a free and democratic Chinese society.
In the rest of China, there are app 65 times as many people.
Think of 65 Taiwans in the global economy, and today's trade disputes over T-shirts will look like peanuts.
Carl Bildt blog 2005

Skeptics have been warning about a bubble in housing prices for years. This past week, the skeptics' case grew stronger.
Chairman Alan Greenspan said the gains in home prices were unsustainable

By Ken Brown, the real estate editor at The Wall Street Journal and wrote extensively about the stock market bubble.
Wall Street Journal May 20, 2005

Billions of dollars in hedge-fund money disappeared into thin air amid the GM mess.
What they have to do to recover could test the whole market.
CNBC 18/5 2005

Hedge funds and other investors seek to offload assets after suffering losses.
This has moved the price of some credit instruments in unusual ways and caused liquidity in some corners of the financial markets to evaporate
Financial Times 18/5 2005

De genomtänkta högerattityderna behövs i politiken
Jag tror att det ligger en fara i att moderaterna i sin längtan mot mitten inte längre ger röst åt den klassiska höger som finns i vårt samhälle
”Vi får acceptera att väldigt många tycker att det Sverige vi har är ganska bra” – ungefär så uttrycker sig den moderate partiledaren Reinfeldt.
Per Dahl Barometern 12/5 2005

Sverige är det land i Europa som har flest utlandsfödda i förhållande till folkmängden,
men andelen sysselsatta bland invandrarna är låg, 60 procent.
Per Nuder enligt Text-TV 18/5 2005

The current-account deficit, now more than $1.8 billion a day, or $2,250 per man, woman and child per year
Europeans and Asians tell us that the global economy would be safer if we saved more and imported less.
The U.S. replies that the economy would be safer if Europeans and Asians saved less and imported more
David Wessell Wall Street Journal 12/5 2005

An emergency plan for dealing with a European financial crisis was agreed at the weekend by EU finance ministers, central bankers and financial regulators.
The most likely scenario to be tested would involve a collapse by a big bank operating across EU borders, triggering fears of a systemic crisis.
Financial Times 16/5 2005

Sverige uppvisar ett jättelikt sparöverskott i form av ett överskott i bytesbalansen på hela 8 procent av BNP.
Skillnaden mot USA:s underskott på 6 procent är enorm.

Klas Eklund DN Debatt 15/5 2005

Riksbanken har värjt sig mot att sänka räntan trots den låga inflationen.
Argumenten har varit dels att ännu lägre ränta riskerar att ge en för snabb låneexpansion och farligt höga huspriser,
dels att effekterna av ännu en räntesänkning vid så här låga nivåer är osäkra.
Båda invändningarna är relevanta, men ....
Klas Eklund DN Debatt 15/5 2005

Bo Siegbahn
Den svenska säkerheten (1971)

Hitler tände världsbranden när han den 1 september 1939 anföll Polen, vilket omöjliggjorde fortsatt passivitet från brittisk och fransk sida.
Per T Ohlsson, Sydsvenskan 8 maj 2005

The U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly shrank in March to $55 billion
Bloomberg 11/5 2005

Stagflation, the remix
From The Economist print edition 5/5 2005

Bostadspriserna har fördubblats på sju år och nästa fastighetskris är nära,
varnade fastighetsekonomerna Stellan Lundström och Erik Persson i en debattartikel i DI i fredags (6/5).
DI-ledare 10/5 2005

Det finns inga tecken på att bostadsmarknaden i Sverige är övervärderad
Klas Eklund DI 10/5 2005

Biggles-sidan uppdaterad
Snyggare - och med länk till BBC om WW II
Klicka här


Den mäktiga tidsandan
Andra Världskriget 60 år - Vietnamkriget 30 år
Rolf Englund för radions OBS 8/5 2005 (refuserat)

Hösten 1989 skrev Tiden (s) om östeuropa att vi i Sverige kan vara till bestående nytta för det nya samhälle som tar form i öst bara under förutsättning att vår neutralitetspolitik består. Genom den understryker vi, skrev Tiden, att vi inte står i tjänst hos de aggressiva elementen inom NATO, och i den har vi en talande symbol för den medelväg som vi även ideologiskt beträder.
Ur Rolf Englund, Till vänster om marknaden -
Bistånd med slagsida, Timbro 1991

Försvarsministern Leni Björklund samtalade på måndagen i Washington med sin amerikanska kollega Donald Rumsfeld om att Sverige kraftigt ska öka sitt engagemang och fördubbla personalen i Afghanistan.
- Det tyckte han skulle vara mycket bra, att vi som är medlemmar i Partnerskap för fred får ta större del i mer krävande uppgifter, säger Björklund till TT efter mötet.
DN 3/5 2005

As Boomers Retire, a Debate:
Will Stock Prices Get Crushed?
In speeches and a new book, he is warning that a flood of boomer retirees with trillions of dollars of assets to sell over the next 20 to 40 years threatens to crush stock and bond prices.
Jeremy Siegel, the Wharton School finance professor well-known until now for recommending stocks as a long-term investment.
Wall Street Journal 5/5 2005

The difference, thus far, between what Japan has experienced in the 15 years since its bubble popped in 1990
and our own post-equity-bubble experience.
The big bubble in Japan occurred in the real-estate market. It's my belief that Japan's experience of dual bubbles has been underemphasized.
In fact, given our lack of savings and massive deficits, we could experience a recession much deeper, though probably shorter, than Japan's.
Bill Fleckenstein CNBC 9/5 2005

Häromveckan sålde en polare till mig en etta på 26 kvadratmeter på första våningen för 1,1 miljon kronor.
Alla varningslampor blinkar rött. Och vi borde ha lärt oss vid det här laget.
Vad sysslar vi med? Tror vi att det ska vara annorlunda den här gången? Barnfamiljer som sitter och tokbjuder över varandra och tjackar hus för 4,5 miljoner kronor som betingade ett pris av 1,5 miljoner för bara något år sedan.
Lena Sundström Metro 4/5 2005

America lost, capitalism won
Last year, United Airlines resumed flights to Ho Chi Minh City—which still bears the code SGN.
The Economist print edition Apr 28th 2005

I am not a believer in conspiracy theories. But
In all my years in this business, never before have I seen a central bank attempt to spin the debate as America's Federal Reserve has over the past six or seven years.
From the New Paradigm mantra of the late 1990s to today's new theories of the current-account adjustment, the US central bank has led the charge in attempting to rewrite conventional macroeconomics and in making an effort to convince market participants of the wisdom of its revisionist theories

It is a concentrated effort on the part of the Fed to exonerate itself from the Original Sin of failing to address asset bubbles. The result is an ever-deepening moral hazard dilemma that poses grave threats to financial markets.
Stephen Roach - Morgan Stanley Global Economic Team - April 25, 2005

Vietnamrörelsen blev en folkrörelse och de flesta var med.
- Alla mina jämnåriga gick i demonstrationerna och deras föräldrar med, säger Annika Swedén. Freden kom dagen före 1 maj, arbetarrörelsens traditionella högtidsdag.
Vietnamesernas befrielse togs upp av alla talare och på eftermiddagen firade Annika Swedén och 15 000 andra i Kungsträdgården.
DN 30/4 2005

The punitive 1919 Treaty of Versailles leading inevitably to Hitler’s capture of power in a resentful Germany in 1933.
But in The Lights That Failed Steiner challenges this traditional view
The 1920s was an aftermath of the first world war and the 1930s was a prologue to the second, the two decades bordered by the “hinge years” of 1929-33, when the Wall Street crash engulfed Europe in depression
Jackie Wullschlager Financial Times April 29 2005

Just about every American is in denial about the pain they will feel if they housing market takes a turn for the worse.
Even a modest slowing in the housing market will have major consequences the housing sector, the labour market, the US economy and the stock market.
The housing market has propped up the broad economy and stock market in more profound ways than many investors appreciate.
Stephen Schurr Financial Times 29/4 2005

Lessons From the Fall of Saigon
The Vietnam War provides few analogies for the Middle East, except as a demonstration of how so many in the West are willing to champion the cause of totalitarian states and movements that the U.S. opposes.
STEPHEN J. MORRIS Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2005

Längs vägen där kommunisternas stridsvagnar rullade in för 30 år sen står nu Pepsi Cola-automater och en del av ekipagen i den stora paraden här i dag var sponsrade av företag som American Express och Visa.
Ekot 30/4 2005

The market does not know whether it should worry about growth or inflation, or possibly both: "stagflation".
The short answer is that growth has hit a soft patch, and inflationary pressures are increasing, but talk of stagflation is needlessly alarmist
Financial Times editorial 23/4 2005

Very important article
Earlier this month, the US Senate voted by 67 to 33 to consider a bill that would impose a 27.5 per cent tariff on all Chinese imports if the latter did not revalue within six months.
In a multilateral trading system, bilateral deficits and surpluses are of no significance.
This is a global challenge, requiring global solutions.

Martin Wolf Financial Times 27/4 2005

Deflation is in the Cards. Yes Readers, that is correct.
The answer to the "Great Flation Question" is DEFLATION.
I am not going to wimp out and say "stagflation"
and rest assured it is not "inflation" which means that the "hyper-inflation" that many see coming is totally laughable.
Michael Shedlock 25/4 2005

What seems clear is that there are three main schools of thought
Philip Coggan FT 22/4 2005

The Group of Seven said in its communiqué that "we emphasise that more flexibility in exchange rates is desirable for major countries and areas that lack such flexibility to promote smooth and widespread adjustments in the international financial system, based on market mechanisms".
After the meeting they /finance ministers and central bank governors of France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the European Union/ went home to administer the single European currency and to try to persuade their voters to accept the EU constitution, including the euro.
Rolf Englund Financial Times 22/4 2005

The Savings and Loans Associations Bailout
Asset bubbles - in the stock exchange, in the real estate or the commodity markets -
invariably burst and often lead to banking crises.
One such calamity struck the USA in 1986-1989.
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. Global Politician 4/24/2005

It is in US long-run interests to avoid an explosive build-up of net external liabilities.
However big the crisis if a sudden correction were to occur now, it would be nothing compared with what would happen after another decade of rising net liabilities.
Group of Seven communiqué: "we emphasise that more flexibility in exchange rates is desirable for major countries and areas that lack such flexibility".
Martin Wolf Financial Times 20/4 2005

The Great Transition Part I: Giant Popping Sound
Did you hear it last week? I mean the Giant Popping Sound of the largest financial mania in history
another step along the way in the ongoing, seismic readjustment that it taking place in the global social, economic and political order.
M.A. Nystrom 18 April 2005

Paul A. Volcker:
there are disturbing trends: huge imbalances, disequilibria, risks -- call them what you will.
Altogether the circumstances seem to me as dangerous and intractable as any I can remember, and I can remember quite a lot.

What really concerns me is that there seems to be so little willingness or capacity to do much about it.
Washington Post April 10 2005

Last bubble was brief, but still irrational
Short duration does not necessarily mean small magnitude.
The size of the late 1990s stock market bubble at its peak still supports a very pessimistic reading of stock market rationality.

By Brad de Long and Konstantin Magin Financial Times 18/4 2005

Söndag 17 april är det 30 år sedan röda khmererna tog makten i Kambodja. Nästan två miljoner människor dödades under den maoistiska gerillans fyra år vid makten.
Ekot 17/4 2005

Söndag 17 april är det 30 år sedan röda khmererna tog makten i Kambodja. Nästan två miljoner människor dödades under den maoistiska gerillans fyra år vid makten.
Ekot 17/4 2005

Johan Hakelius ledarsidan i SvD augusti 1997:
Vi ler, ställer inga obekväma frågor och ger henne ett Sommarprogram om året.
En talman som låtsas som om hennes händer inte sudlades av blod då hon försökte skrubba den kambodjanska slaktarbodens tröskel ren. Och vi låter henne göra det. Tystnaden blir kanske lite spänd när Pol Pot nämns i pressen igen. Men det går snart över. Vi ler, ställer inga obekväma frågor och ger henne ett Sommarprogram om året.
Klicka här

P O Enquists berömda artikel 1975-05-15 om Kambodjas horhus innehåller även den lika maffiga som pinsamma meningen:
"Ett otal ledarsidor utgjuter sitt raseri över den kambodjanska befrielserörelsen som måhända alltför häftigt låtit utrymma Phnom Penh."
P O Enquist Expressen 1975-05-15

Beijing Youth Daily, a popular newspaper in China's capital, relies on a diet of starlets and sports to attract readers.
So it was a telling moment when it gave its front page over to exchange rate policy one day last month and announced in blazing tabloid headlines that a revaluation of the renminbi was in the works
13/5 2005

Brad Setser, a former Treasury official who is now at Roubini Global Economics, an economic-analysis firm, reckons that if non-oil import growth continues at its recent pace and the oil price stays over $50 a barrel, America’s annual trade deficit would reach nearly $800 billion by the end of 2005
The Economist 14/4 2005

In the early 1990’s, Foreign Affairs devoted an entire issue to an article written by political science professor Samuel Huntington titled the “Clash of Civilizations,” which predicted a terror war between Islam and the west.
And now Peter Peterson just wrote an article about the deficit crisis facing the United States and the almost inevitability of a dollar crisis.
Peterson succeeded David Rockefeller as the Chairman of the Council for Foreign Relations in 1985.
He had been the CEO of Lehman Brothers. He served as Secretary of Commerce in the Nixon administration.
Mr. Swanson 11/4 2005

Brad Setser, Oxford University
Lest anyone think the U.S. trade deficit is made in China, or just the product of an undervalued renminbi, consider this:
the U.S. trade deficit with the Eurozone continues to grow.
WSJ 12/5 2005

Richard Clarida in Wall Street Journal
Alan Greenspan stirred up the bond market by opining that the then-low level of bond yields -- in tandem with strong growth, $50 oil
and a succession of Fed rate hikes since June -- represented a "conundrum."

From the TIPS market, we learn that the expected real return over the next 10 years on a riskless investment in government bonds is 1.81%.
11/4 2005

Bloomberg
The U.S. trade deficit surged in February to a record $61 billion
driven by a jump in oil prices and imports of Chinese textiles that overwhelmed record exports.
12/4 2005

This week both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have come out with reports warning that America’s fiscal irresponsibility poses serious risks to the world economy.
America’s 12-month current-account deficit now stands at $665.9 billion, or 5.7% of GDP.
The Economist 6/4 2005

Jane Fonda gör pudel om Vietnam
"It was the largest lapse of judgement that I can even imagine"
Cit i Time magazine 11/4 2005 (with links)

The World Bank:
The severity of the coming slowdown will depend on the extent to which foreign investors lose their nerve about buying U.S.-dollar-denominated assets.
"A reduction in the pace at which central banks are accumulating dollars, a weakening in investors' appetite for risk, or a greater-than-anticipated pickup in inflationary pressures could cause interest rates to rise farther than projected, providing a deeper-than-expected slowdown or even a global recession
Wall Street Journal 6/4 2005

Since it takes 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with the birth rate and immigration, anything less than that and we are actually losing jobs no matter what the hype from CNBC says.
A quick glance at the chart clearly shows that jobs have not kept pace with the birth rate in 16 out of the last 23 months.
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis 6/4 2005

Skandia Liv, med VD:n Urban Bäckström spekulerar i en starkare krona och svagare dollar.
Urban Bäckström och hans stab är så oroade över obalanserna i USA att hela Skandia Livs amerikanska obligationsinnehav sålts.
Cecilia Skingsley, DI, 5/4 2005

– Welcome to the Bubble Economy, 2005.
There’s the housing bubble and the commercial office space bubble. There’s the bond-market bubble and its two progeny, the junk-market bubble and the emerging-market-debt bubble. That nearly $2.50-a-gallon price you see at the pump has all the markings of an oil bubble. And the premiums being paid for all those corporate mergers and acquisitions is a pretty good indication of a stock-market bubble.
Steven Pearlstein 5/4 2005

From January 1980 to January 2005, M3 US grew 420%.
Dow Jones Industrial Average returned 1,098%
Jim Jubak CNBC 1/4 2005

It's a Totally New Paradigm
Talk of "new paradigms" or "new economic models" has been associated with every major bubble in history, typically near the peak.
Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Thoughts on the great inflation/deflation/stagflation debate as well as discussions on commodities, currencies, interest rates, and policy decisions that affect the global markets

”Den enda period sedan 1700 då vår uppskattade realränta varit så här låg var åren under och närmast efter andra världskriget
Den genomsnittliga realräntan har varit 3 procent under tre århundraden.
Gunnar Örn, DI 30/3 2005

The doomsday scenario, considered unlikely by most economists but not impossible
a recession in the United States and abroad might follow.
To paraphrase former Treasury secretary John Connally: the dollar may be America's currency, but it's the world's problem.
Robert J. Samuelson Newsweek 21/3 2005

Americans have come to see their homes much like cash machines, withdrawing $223bn last year from the equity in them.
The worry is not simply that consumers will stop taking money out of their houses if appreciation stops or prices fall. They may also feel the need to bolster their depleted savings accounts - again to the detriment of consumption.
Christopher Swann, Financial Times March 27 2005

Greenspan's Second Bubble
Taken collectively, those responses have encouraged what is arguably a worldwide housing bubble.
John H. Makin, March 28, 2005

Ten Reasons why China should move its peg and pull the plug on the US reckless policies
Nouriel Roubini's Global Economics Blog March 11, 2005

In an environment in which profits, business success, and jobs themselves have been driven in substantial part by a 20-year trend of lower interest rates, an observer must make the unmistakable conclusion that we have come to the end of the road.
Age does have some benefits if only in knowing what not to do if given a second chance.
PIMCO Founder and CIO Bill Gross addressed the graduating MBA class at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business on May 8, 2004.

Essentially what we are saying is that all global asset prices markets will remain severely distorted as long as the main suppliers of excess savings to the world economy - the Japanese private investors - continue to live in a zero-rate environment.
If the Japanese economy regains momentum and the Nikkei manages to break through the 12,000 level. The bear market in global bonds would then resume in a big way.
Anatole Kaletsky at InvestorsInsight 22/3 2005

A Guide to Global Inflation-Linked Bonds
a burgeoning global market that has more than tripled in size over the last six years, growing from $145 billion in 1997 to $551 billion at the end of 2003.
PIMCO January 2005

US, Germany, France and UK face junk debt status
Rapidly rising pension and healthcare spending
Financial Times 21/3 2005

The U.S. trade deficit - Is it good or bad?
The answer to this will be derived by refuting the two most common views of the implications of the trade deficit, the mercantilist and the supply-side view, who are strongly at odds with each other but still both manages to get it wrong
Stefan M.I. Karlsson Mises 21/3 2005

Important, if true
The dollar has fallen enough
No doubt some financial wizards will jump at this to construct a model to forecast short- and medium-term exchange rate movements. Good luck to them. For the rest of us, the important point is that the much-predicted crisis in the euro/dollar exchange may already have occurred.
Wolfgang Munchau 21/3 2005

The Fed's mistake has been to keep the dollar presses running at full throttle for too long.
We aren't the only ones warning about inflation risks. No less an authority than Paul Volcker, the former Fed Chairman, used a February speech at Stanford to underscore what he called "the oldest lesson of economic policy
Wall Street Journal editorial 31/3 2005

A bubble or mania is a type of investing phenomenon that occurs when investors put too much demand on a stock or sector.
A crash is a sudden, dramatic drop in value of individual shares of stock and the total stock market as a whole. It generally occurs in a very short period of time. It is attributable to the bursting of a bubble.
Rich Scott & Ramsay Simmons March 2005

When the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, trouble usually follows.
In 1987, the stock market crashed. In 1994, Orange County went bankrupt and Mexico devalued its peso, ravaging its economy. In 2000, the Nasdaq Stock Market bubble burst.

Others think it will be different this time.
Wall Street Journal 20/3 2005

Vad som är fullständigt oacceptabelt är att den nu sittande riksdagen, vald utan att frågan om EU-grundlagen behandlades i valdebatten, skall fatta beslutet.
Detta är emellertid vad samarbetspartierna - kollaboratörspartierna - socialdemokraterna, moderaterna, folkpartiet, kristdemokraterna och centern har kommit överens om.
Deras lika fiffiga som djupt odemokratiska plan, ovärdigt till och med demokratin i Katrineholm, är att riksdagen under den brådast julhandeln nu i december skall klubba igenom EU-grundlagen
Rolf Englund 16/3 2005

The U.S. current account deficit 2004 widened to a record $665.9 billion, equivalent to 5.7 percent of GDP
Bloomberg 16/3 2005

Hayek, Currency Competition and
European Monetary Union

April 2000 by Otmar Issing

Whom to believe - Buffett or Greenspan?
The Oracle of Omaha foresees dire consequences for our debt-ridden ways.
The Fed chairman predicts a soft landing and says the debt is no big deal. Who's right?
Jim Jubak, CNBC 15/3 2005

Many economic commentators argue that the trade deficit somehow results from low saving and the federal budget deficit.
But reducing the budget deficit can't really help the trade deficit. To shrink the budget deficit, the government must either spend less or tax more, withdrawing demand from the U.S. economy.
Frank Newman and Dan Newman, Wall Street Journal, March 14, 2005

SCB har räknat ut vad alla som får sjukpenning, är förtidspensionerade, är arbetslösa eller i åtgärder eller får socialbidrag motsvarar i antal heltidspersoner.
Krisåret 1992 var summan 954 300 personer.
För 2005 förutses 1 054 000 personer i aktiv ålder inte gå till något arbete.

Danne Nordling blog 15/3 2005

Kudlow On The Trade Deficit
Mr. Kudlow's rhetoric typifies an ongoing Wall Street, government, and media propaganda effort that would even amaze George Orwell.
Peter Schiff 11/3 2005

Five years to the day after the peak of the last global investment bubble, signs that another one may be about to burst could be seen, ironically enough, in the telecommunications industry.
Chuck Prince, chief executive of Citigroup, said: "The possibility of a liquidity bubble around the world concerns me. A very cautionary thing is that it feels like the world is changing and traditional indices may not give a complete picture."
Financial Times 14/3 2005

The resolution of our current account deficit... does not strike me as overly worrisome
Chairman Alan Greenspan cit at BBC 11/3 2005

Ett genomförande av den arbetarstyrda ekonomin fordrar långtgående reformer, bl a måste den nuvarande kapitalägarklassen pensioneras och produktionsmedlen socialiseras.
Bo Södersten i "Den svenska sköldpaddan" 1975.

The U.S. trade deficit widened to $58.3 billion in January.
The trade gap was larger than the $56.8 billion economists predicted.
CNBC 11/3 2005

One of my deepest concerns is that the current complacency with the trade deficit which stems from the relative stability of the US economy and markets will lead to an event as dramatic as the fall of the NASDAQ.
The US economy is growing handily, thank you very much, and unemployment is slowly beginning to drop. The trade deficit has caused no problems.
John Mauldin 11/3 2005

56 private economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal Online this month see another force at work:
expectations for low inflation.

Alan Greenspan called it a "conundrum": Long-term interest rates have remained low despite the Federal Reserve's campaign to raise rates on the short end.
Wall Street Journal 10/3 2005

Dollar sinks on trade gap worries
Currency traders fret about the possibility of disappointing numbers on Friday
CNBC 8/3 2005

Every Fed tightening cycle has brought a financial crisis.
Click here

Bo Södersten och sanningen
I en intervju i TV8 7 mars 2005 - Engelsbergssamtalen, intervjuare Fabian Af Petersén - sade Bo Södersten i samtalets avsnitt om löntagarfonderna och vänstervågen typ att han (Södersten) själv varit främmande härför.

Tiden är kommen för att visa att en konsekvent tillämpning av socialdemokratisk ideologi innebär en djuptgående förändring av samhället.
Kapitalismen har fyllt sin historiska funktion. Kapitalismen kan gå.

Bo Södersten i "Den svenska sköldpaddan" 1975.

"- Det enda som ska ha inflytande i företagen är arbetet, kapitalet ska ägas av samhället, kollektivet, som sedan ställer detta till löntagarnas förfogande, sa han."
Om mötet med arbetarkommunen och LO-sektionen i Ängelholm, enligt Arbetet 1978-04-15.

Se även boken "Kapitalismen byggde landet"
Bo Södersten, SNS 1991

The Mystery of Low Interest Rates
U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently called the declines a "conundrum."
By ROBERT J. SAMUELSON
The Washington Post March 7, 2005

Let me be clear about what I think Roach is saying but cannot say directly.
He is referring to the "R" word - Recession.

Rates that would be high enough to slow (compress) consumer demand must be high enough to raise borrowing costs. They must be high enough to significantly slow down home equity loans for new consumption.
John Mauldin March 4, 2005

Warren Buffett has warned that the US trade deficit risks creating a “sharecropper’s society”
Mr Buffett’s bet against the dollar also grew. Foreign exchange contracts – mostly short positions against the US dollar – nearly doubled over the year to $21.4bn
Financial Times 5/3 2005

Over the past couple of weeks, investors have been falling over themselves to snap up new offerings, whether they be long dated or short term, high yield or sovereign.
Beneficiaries of this feeding frenzy have included the French government, which became the first from the Group of Seven leading industrialised countries to issue a 50-year bond.
In what must count as a triumph of hope over experience for anyone with the slightest recollection of how inflation can suddenly take hold, it was priced to yield just 4.21 per cent a year.
Financial Times editorial 5/3 2005

Saving is a good thing, but it is possible to overdo it.
The tax preferences for U.S. residential real estate are well known.
John H. Makin February 24, 2005

Arbetslivsministern: Jämviktsarbetslösheten i svensk ekonomi ligger i dag ordentligt under 4 procent"
När Riksbanken lanserade låginflationspolitiken 1995 behövdes en högre ränta
DI 3/3 2005

Dress rehearsal for a dollar deluge
Tuesday's sell-off was a test run of the problems that will erupt when foreign investors refuse to finance our debt binge and home owners stop their own binge.
Bill Fleckenstein CNBC 28/2 2005

If I believed in Austrian business cycle theory
I would think that the U.S. economy is due for a dollar plunge, and a massive sectoral shift toward exports. Furthermore I would think it will not handle such an unexpected shock very well.
I would buy puts on T-Bond futures and become rich.
Tyler Cowen on January 19, 2005

Hur hög är då denna neutrala "lagomränta" som Fed siktar på?
Där är osäkerheten desto större. Buden varierar från 3,0 till 5,0 procent. Och det är ett avsevärt spann. - Vi vet i dagsläget inte var den aktuella räntan ligger, förklarade Fedchefen Alan Greenspan nyligen. Banken får pröva sig fram.
Lars-Georg Bergkvist SvD Näringsliv 27/2 2005

Conundrum (gåta eller kvistig fråga, kinkigt problem enligt Norstedts engelsk-svenska ordbok) är onekligen "veckans ord" på Wall Street.
Som så ofta förr är det Fedchefen Alan Greenspan som lanserat det. Han har inte bara gjort sig känd som "alla tiders siffertuggare" som dagligen plöjer igenom enorma mängder ekonomisk statistik. Han gillar också att leka med orden. Vem minns inte hans varning 1996 för att börskurserna stigit i irrationellt övermått. Den här gången handlar det om den mystiska prissättningen på obligationsmarknaden.
Lars-Georg Bergkvist SvD Näringsliv 19/2 2005

European Sado-Monetarism
"What could Europe do to protect itself in the face of a narrowing US deficit. The obvious answer would be to stimulate domestic demand by cutting interest rates and taxes. But...
Anatole Kaletsky of GaveKal research Cit by John Mauldin 25/2 2005

I have updated my page about Biggles
and also added a link to Worrals - The Lara Croft of the 40's and 50's

Remember these names. Toshihiko Fukui. Zhou Xiaochuan. Perng Fai-Nan. Park Seung. Joseph Yam. And Yaga Venugopal Reddy.
They are the central bank governors of Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and India respectively. They are also arguably more important for US monetary policy than Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, or his successor who will take on the role next year.
Chris Giles, FT's economics editor, Financial Times 25/2 2005
Very Important Article

Forget trade deficits: go for growth
Daniel Griswold, director of the Center for Trade Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, Financial Times February 24 2005

America's trade deficit is essentially an accounting abstraction.
FT 24/2 2005

The idea that central banks should track asset prices is hardly new.
In 1911 Irving Fisher, an American economist, argued in a book, “The Purchasing Power of Money”, that policymakers should stabilise a broad price index which included shares, bonds and property as well as goods and services.
The Economist 24/2 2005

H

Vad är det för land där bara knappt 13 procent av BNP investeras i företag och bostadsbyggande? Där bytesbalansöverskottet blev 206 miljarder kronor eller 8 procent av fjolårets BNP?
Det är inte riskkapital det är brist på – det som saknas är investeringsobjekt i Sverige som klarar lönsamhetskriterierna.
Dagens Industri ledare 23/2 2005

Ingemar Hansson menade att det var vilseledande av Fölster att påstå att den låga investeringskvoten beror på dåligt näringslivsklimat i Sverige.
– Den låga investeringskvoten beror på att vi har lägre bostadsinvesteringar i Sverige.
Om de räknas bort ligger vi på en genomsnittlig investeringsnivå, förklarade Ingemar Hansson.
SvD Näringsliv, reporter Leif Petersen 12/1 2005

If the mighty dollar can be rocked by a single paragraph in a report to the Korean parliament something is amiss.
That something is the dependence of the dollar on a handful of Asian central banks, which between them control $2,400bn reserves.

Financial Times editorial 24/2 2005

Det avgörande för vad som kommer att hända med världsekonomin är om det låga amerikanska hushållssparandet kombineras med ytterligare stigande räntor i USA. Då kan vi se en dämpning av fastighetspriser och privat konsumtion i USA som får starka negativa effekter för hela världsekonomin.
Optimister har ju lika rätt som pessimister men har roligare under tiden. Ändå väljer jag att sälla mig till pessimisterna.
Olle Wästberg nyhetsbrev 16/1 2005

Allianspartierna tar striden för 1990-talets valfrihetsreformer och mot höjda skatter, men de erbjuder inget långsiktigt alternativ till högskattesamhället. Ingen kräver att de ska tala för chockterapi, men det behövs en idé om en annan väg.
Det räcker inte med ha starkare förslag i sak om det är motståndaren som har fångat människors fantasi.
P J Anders Linder SvD 20/2 2005

Det finns bara en stensäker placering: att köpa statens realränteobligationer.
Spararen kompenseras helt för inflationen och är garanterad en fast real ränta under spartiden.
I dagsläget får den som köper en 5-årig obligation 1,34 procent per år och 1,51 procent om pengarna binds i åtta år.
SvD 22/2 2005

The truth of the matter is this:
Across three decades, only one economic event has been guaranteed to produce balanced US trade: a recession.

Marshall Auerback,February 15, 2005

U.S. wholesale prices rose 0.3 percent in January.
Excluding food and energy, prices rose the most in more than six years.

Bloomberg 18/2 2005

PJ Anders Linders tvångstankar
PJ:s historia om Rydenfelts insatser tar slut vid 1960-talets mitt
Rolf Englund på internet 16/2 2005

In fact, the current-account deficit has little to do with American profligacy and nearly everything to do with policies that make the U.S. a magnet for foreign capital and faster growth.
housing starts jumped 4.7% in January to a nearly 20-year high
Wall Street Journal editorial 17/2 2005

No Problem
Pessimistic pundits emphasize the dangers lurking in unsustainable trade and payment imbalances, excessive liquidity, savings shortfalls, dollar overhangs and global reflation
Money also talks, however, and its message has failed to echo the pundits' pessimism. After all, the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury securities -- the world's most actively traded security -- is not far from 4%, near 40-year lows.
JOHN LIPSKY and JAMES E. GLASSMAN Wall Street Journal February 16, 2005

Testimony of Chairman Alan Greenspan
We should be careful in endeavoring to account for the decline in long-term interest rates by adverting to technical factors in the United States alone because yields and risk spreads have narrowed globally.
February 16, 2005

Sven Rydenfelt klicka här

Sven Rydenfelt (1911 - 2005) Timbro

The Dollar and The Trade Deficit
A simple explanation at a glance
Rolf Englund internet 16/2 2005

Resistance to systemic risk may be eroded
Has a newly resilient international banking system acquired near-immunity to crises? Or could a financial bolt from the blue still expose global finance to a devastating systemic shock?
John Plender FT 15/2 2005
Very Important Article - as always with John Plender

The underlying source of economic growth over the last couple years has come from folks using the housing ATM to live beyond their means.
Bill Fleckenstein CNBC 14/2 2005

Samuel Brittan happened, prompted by Professor Charles Goodhart, to read Professor Milton Friedman’s seminal presidential address to the American Economic Association in 1967 somewhat sooner than any other prominent commentator in Britain at that time
About "Against the Flow" by Samuel Brittan, Atlantic Books
Peter Jay FT 12/2 2005

Will the Bretton Woods 2 Regime Unravel Soon?
The Risk of a Hard Landing in 2005-2006
Nouriel Roubini and Brad Setser February 2005

Papers covering the UK's exit from the Exchange Rate Mechanism in 1992 have been released after a Treasury document was inadvertently e-mailed to the BBC.
The Treasury said it regretted that the BBC had revealed some details it had not wanted to be in the public domain.
BBC 9/2 2005

US trade gap hits record in 2004
$671.7bn
BBC 10/2 2005

H

Why long-term bond yields are low
OECD real interest rates also show a pronounced long term downward trend - from about 6 per cent in the mid-1980s to 2 per cent recently.
Samuel Brittan FT February 4 2005

Världen flödar av pengar som väntar på att lånas ut. Räntorna är ovanligt låga för att vara i en så pass stark konjunktur.
Det är behagligt för stunden, men kan leda till både excesser och påföljande bakslag.

Johan Schück DN 5/2 2005

A consequence of the contraction in profit margins of exporters to the United States, and thus low pass-through of dollar depreciation to U.S. import prices, has been minimal pressure on U.S. consumer price inflation in recent years.
A corollary is that the adjustment of U.S. real imports--that is, the quantity of imported goods and services--has been negligible.
Chairman Greenspan 4/2 2005

H

Cutting the budget deficit won't do much to shrink the gaping U.S. trade deficit, a Federal Reserve study has found
When the budget deficit increases by one dollar, the trade deficit increases by less than 20 cents.
RE: 80 procent påverkar således den inhemska efterfrågan
Wall Street Journal 2/2 2005

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Statstelevisionen:
Cornelias pappa blev kär i en man och gifte om sig, så nu har hon två pappor.
TV 2 1/2 2005
RE: Politiskt korrekt nonsens.
Man har bara en pappa och en mamma.

Prices, when freely set, bring order and concord to the unplanned activities of market economies — as if by an invisible hand.
But three of the most important prices in the world economy — the price of oil, the price of capital and the price of the dollar — are nudged this way or that by the very visible hands of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Federal Reserve and the G7.

The Economist 31/1 2005
Very Important Article

Bostadspriserna har på många håll skenat. I delar av Stockholms innerstad har de sedan länge accelererat bortom förnuftets gräns.
Pernilla Ström Smedjan 27/1 2005

José Manuel Barroso verkar vara en klåpare, inte vuxen uppgiften att leda den nya EU-kommission.
Rolf Gustavsson SvD 30/1 2005

US Short-term interest rates and inflation are both rising, the current-account deficit is huge and widening, the dollar has fallen and the fiscal outlook has worsened.
Surely investors looking over the next ten years will want a better return than 4.2%?
Economists are genuinely puzzled by all this.
The Economist print edition 27/1 2005

The economic crisis 2004, predicted by many, has not materialised.
Not so fast, say the economic experts at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
"The good news of 2004, the past performance is not indicative of future returns," quips Stephen Roach, chief economist at investment bank Morgan Stanley. Fair enough, Mr Roach is a notorious "Davos bear", well-known for his economic pessimism. Trouble is, many people here are happy to agree with him, even his old sparring partner, the perennial optimist Jacob Frenkel, vice-chairman of insurance giant AIG.
BBC 27/1 2005

Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, warned this month of “unsustainable price increases in property markets” that could result from excess liquidity and strong credit growth.
FT 27/1 2005

The great question is whether the US will be able to reduce the deficit through a gradual manufacturing revival or, dramatically, through a domestic spending recession
What pundits have not noticed is that the US does not have adequate manufacturing capacity to eliminate the external deficit.
David Hale FT 26/1 2005

China's overall trade surplus was a modest $32 billion last year, peanuts compared with America's trade deficit of over $600 billion
The Economist 20/1 2005

Moderate growth in the presence of substantial policy stimulus during the recovery phase of a U.S. business cycle raises some serious questions about the level of interest rates that is consistent with long-term U.S. growth.
In a world that has essentially been driven by U.S. demand growth, a slowdown in U.S. consumption will add to the global slowdown and produce negative feedback effects, especially on export-driven economies such as Germany...
John H. Makin January 21, 2005

Are inflation targets "The End of History?"
Samuel Brittan 12/1 2005 read it here

Redan under 1970-talet, när jag forskade om kapitalbildningen i Sverige, oroade jag mig för den nedgång vi då såg i investeringarna som andel av BNP. Under de trettio år som gått har denna oro inte minskat, snarare tvärtom – den har ökat i takt med att den nedåtgående trenden i investeringarna har fortsatt.
Vice riksbankschef Villy Bergström, pressmeddelande Riksbanken 18/1 2005

Ur Rolf Englund första löntagarfondsartikel, 1974, i Svensk Linje m anl av Bo Södersten och Villy Bergström
Villy Bergström har i sin bok "Kapitalbildning och industriell demokrati" utvecklat tankarna om löntagarägda företag och branschfonder. Vidare har den s-märkte nationalekonomiprofessorn Bo Södersten i Ekonomisk Debatt nyligen diskuterat den arbetarstyrda ekonomin.
Villy Bergström (VB) har skisserat förutsättningarna för branschfonderna och dessas konstruktion på i korthet följande sätt. Enligt VB skulle en lösning efter de linjer som han drar upp skapa förutsättning både för ekonomisk tillväxt och en genomgripande demokratisering av det ekonomiska livet - kort sagt en smidig övergång till en demokratisk socialism.
Han säger att demokratiseringen från två håll blir den kniptångsmanöver, vars skänklar är löntagarnas krav att bli hörda och näringslivets kapitalbehov, som till slut avskaffar kapitalismen i Sverige. ... mer här

The president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers, sparked an uproar at an academic conference Friday when he said that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers.
mer här

If a weaker dollar can’t do the trick, what can?
The answer, in my view, is real interest rates

The only way America can ever get a handle on its trade and current account conundrum is on the import side of the equation. After all, imports are currently 52% larger than exports (in real terms), making it almost mathematically impossible for the US to export its way out of its trade deficit.
In looking at real US interest rates over the broad sweep of history, there’s nothing but upside from current levels. The real federal funds rate remains around “zero” and the real rate on a 10-year Treasury note is down to its post-1986 low of 0.7%.
Stephen Roach 14/1 2005

"Det är först när man har fallande huspriser och hög arbetslöshet som det får stora effekter", sade Stefan Fölster.
Dollarn måse falla ytterligare för att rätta till obalanserna i den amerikanska ekonomin
Stefan Fölster 2005-01-12: Nyhetsbyrån Direkt

The U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly grew to $60.3 billion in November, the widest ever, as demand for oil and consumer goods drove imports to a record.
Exports fell.

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) 2005

Svenskt Näringslivs chefsekonom Stefan Fölster upprepade sitt budskap om den låga investeringskvoten i Sverige jämfört med exempelvis övriga EU-länder.
Ingemar Hansson menade att det var vilseledande av Fölster att påstå att den låga investeringskvoten beror på dåligt näringslivsklimat i Sverige. – Den låga investeringskvoten beror på att vi har lägre bostadsinvesteringar i Sverige. Om de räknas bort ligger vi på en genomsnittlig investeringsnivå, förklarade Ingemar Hansson.
SvD Näringsliv, reporter Leif Petersen 12/1 2005

Argentina plans to repay all its $15bn debt with the International Monetary Fund,
the private creditors, who hold $81bn of defaulted bonds, are crying foul.

The score will be 20 per cent down for the IMF versus 75 per cent for the markets.
Adam Lerrick Financial Times 11/1 2005

I continue to believe that our stock market is the financial equivalent of an 8.0-plus earthquake waiting to happen.
Financial insanity is rampant. Folks are speculating in houses, with many having more than one real estate investment due to the financing that’s available and the belief that real estate is now bulletproof.
Bill Fleckenstein, CNBC 10/1 2005

The future of the dollar seems today to be the most important issue for the world economy in 2005.
Is it overvalued or undervalued? Will it rise or will it fall?

The dollar's ride will be a bumpy one but the fundamental reasons why the trend is downward remain in place.
John Kay FT 4/1 2004
Highly recommended

Clearly, import demand needs to decrease. Which policy levers could bring this about?
The US government is unlikely to use fiscal policy to push the economy into recession to reduce consumer demand
Lex FT 30/12 2004

Europas sista sommar.
Vem startade första världskriget?

The pundits who have been predicting higher interest rates based on large U.S. budget and current account deficits have some explaining to do.
It is odd that the broad field of U.S. deficit bemoaners, including a former Treasury secretary, an immensely successful investor, and the manager of the world's largest bond fund, have chosen to mislead the public on the major determinants of interest rates.
John Makin 21/12 2004

Hushåll som lånar till husköp och annat måste vara beredda att klara en ränta som är två till tre procent högre än i dag.
Lars Heikensten SvD/TT 27/12 2004

Hushållen ökar sin belåning och huspriserna skjuter i höjden. Risken stiger för överhettning och påföljande bakslag, men ingen gör något åt det.
Johan Schück DN Ekonomi 18/12 2004

The great housing boom of the early 21st century is looking shaky. Governments are growing nervous about whether prices will hold, and what will happen if they do not.
A nightmare for the Fed would be that it finds itself under pressure to raise interest rates to support the dollar just as a weakening housing market needs lower rates to avoid big declines.
Floyd Norris International Herald Tribune 24/12 2004

Asteroid could hit Earth in 2029
NASA/CNN 24/12 2004

Hervé Gaymard, France's new finance minister, on Thursday warned of a global "economic catastrophe" if the US, Europe and Asia did not work together to stem the decline of the dollar against the Euro.
"If we stay as we are, with no co-ordination, one can imagine a catastrophic economic situation at the global level," he said.
Financial Times 24/12 2004

Welcome to the vicious cycle
Every dollar increase in the price of a barrel of imported oil increases the size of the U.S. trade deficit, which puts more pressure on the value of the U.S. dollar,
which makes OPEC countries want to raise the dollar-denominated price of a barrel of oil to make up for the dollar’s fall, and so on.
Jim Jubak CNBC 10/12 2004

"En kunskapsföraktande radikalfeminism"
Pojkar ska vara bäst, och flickor ska ha bästisar för att uppnå hög social status i skolan
Detta är en tumregel som förvånansvärt ofta går att tillämpa i försöken att förstå även vuxnas drivkrafter och beteenden.
Sofia Nerbrand SvD ledarsida 23/12 2004

A significant decline in both consumption and investment will mean a recession in the US.
This conclusion is so obvious that the only question is why the markets are not forecasting it already.
Barry Eichengreen Financial Times 20/12 2004

The first step towards an answer is deciding what a sustainable US current account deficit might be
Now turn to the required changes in real exchange rates.
Martin Wolf Financial Times 22/12 2004

Believing in hedge funds - or fairies
The strongest force driving us towards false opinions is the natural human desire to believe what we want to believe.
John Kay Financial Times 21/12 2004

Den nya ekonomin är här för att stanna. Åtminstone under ett decennium till.
Lars-Georg Bergkvist SvD Näringsliv 18/12 2004

Trade Gap Widens to a Record $55.5 Bln
The U.S. trade deficit widened to an all-time high of $55.5 billion in October
Bloomberg 14/12 2004

The most acute risks are posed by the large and rapidly growing US current account deficits.
They exceed 6 per cent of gross domestic product and are on a trajectory to reach 10 per cent
- more than $1,000bn annually - within the next few years
Fred Bergsten Financial Times 14/12 2004

A floating threat
China - With floating exchange rates you do not need such a big currency reserve
Rolf Englund Financial Times 8/12 2004

A weaker dollar and higher bond yields would be catastrophic for current global upturn
the more critical question for most of us is why the world's central banks need the $3,000bn in currency reserves they now possess
Kit Juckes, Head of Market Strategy, Royal Bank of Scotland Financial Markets 10/12 2004

U.S. Twin Deficits No Problem
Nobel Laureate Edward Prescott Says in Stockholm

People that say there is (a problem) are ignorant, they do not understand something called balance sheet, present value, something that a good undergraduate (economics student) learns
Reuters 7/12 2004

The growing external deficits of the world's "sole superpower" have put the global economy
on a path that is not merely unsustainable but also dangerously so.

US and Asian policymakers seem determined to take no decisive action in response.
This is understandable, but a big mistake.
Martin Wolf Financial Times December 8 2004

Trichet should not bemoan the rising euro
My advice to Europeans is simple: sit back, relax and enjoy the terms-of-trade gains from your currency's ascent.
Melvyn Krauss Financial Times December 7 2004

Jag tror att dollarn är kvar på nivån 1,20 mot euron om ett år
Handelsbankens chefsekonom Jan Häggström, Dagens Industri 6/12 2004

The Age of Inflation is finished
Over the past four decades, the rise and fall of double-digit inflation has been the most significant force affecting the U.S. economy.
Robert J. Samuelson Washington Post 2/12 2004

Don't Confuse Me With the Facts
By John Mauldin December 3, 2004
Highly recommended

America has habits that are inappropriate, to say the least, for the guardian of the world's main reserve currency: rampant government borrowing, furious consumer spending and a current-account deficit big enough to have bankrupted any other country some time ago. This makes a dollar devaluation inevitable
The Economist 2/12 2004

Kan man undvika recession i USA när man måste minska importen med 600 miljarder dollar?
Rolf Englund på Nationalekonomiska Föreningen 30/11 2004

To bring about a substantial reduction in the external deficit without a deep recession, the US needs a huge change in internal relative prices.
About Maurice Obstfeld and Kenneth Rogoff The Unsustainable US Current Account Position Revealed
Martin Wolf Financial Times 1/12 2004

The rising balance of payments deficit implies that the budget deficit must get progressively worse from now on if stagnation is to be avoided.
Wynne Godley and Alex Izurieta Financial Times December 3 2004

Unilateral action can stop the dollar's slide
Paul de Grauwe, professor of international economics at the University of Leuven Financial Times November 30 2004

Europe must help slow the dollar's decline
History suggests that sharp, sustained movements of the dollar are a sign of monetary disequilibrium. If money market rates in either the US or abroad are pegged for a long time at a level badly out of line with so-called neutral rates, large speculative waves of capital are likely eventually to rock the currency markets.
Brendan Brown Financial Times November 26 2004

Kvinnliga riksdagsledamöter som känner sig trakasserade av riksdagsmännen ska kunna få professionellt stöd från riksdagen. Det är ett förslag för hur riksdagen ska komma till rätta med förlöjligande och osynliggörande av kvinnor i riksdagen.
Ekot 29/11 2004

The day could come when foreign investors demand better terms for financing America's spending spree (and savings shortfall).
That is the day the dollar will collapse, interest rates will soar and the stock market will plunge.
Stephen S. Roach, The New York Times/IHT 27/11 2004

Does reduction of the US current account deficit require or
does it cause a fall in the dollar?

The two possible answers lead to opposite conclusions about the impact on economic policy both in the US and the rest of the world.
Wolfgang Munchau Financial Times November 29 2004

Persistent and widespread efforts to resist currency moves are doomed to fail, and if pursued long enough, can lead to serious resource misallocation.
The reluctance of America's trading partners to allow dollar depreciation, even as the U.S. current account deficit has grown to a point where nearly $2 billion a day must be purchased in order to keep the dollar stable, has created a massive global imbalance.
John H. Makin, American Enterprise Institute November 24, 2004

A dollar crash, if it occurred, could trigger a terrifying global slump.
Robert J. Samuelson Washington Post 17/11 2004

Click for Economist article

No end in sight for dollar slide
China had cut the size of its US Treasury bond holdings in its foreign exchange reserves to $180bn to avoid losses from a weakening US dollar.
BBC 26/11 2004

Nihilism är inte tolerans
Sofia Nerbrand SvD ledarsida 25/11 2004

Bara under tredje kvartalet hade Sverige ett överskott i utrikes betalningar med 54 miljarder kronor.
En viktig orsak är vårt mycket stora handelöverskott med USA, Sveriges numera största exportmarknad.

Fredrik Braconier SvD Näringsliv 24/11 2004

Adjusting to the dollar's inevitable fall
Altering the path of the US external accounts, while sustaining global economic activity, is among the biggest challenges now confronting policymakers.
Martin Wolf Financial Times November 24 2004

En del sade vid murens fall att anti-kommunisterna hade ”fått rätt”. Jag ogillar det uttrycket: fått rätt.
Vi hade haft rätt hela tiden

Per Ahlmark 9 november 2004 – 15 år efter murens fall

Sedan 2002 har den amerikanska dollarn fallit med 35 procent. Under de senaste veckorna har takten i nedgången ökat.
Många är övertygade om att fallet kommer att fortsätta.
Joakim Stymne SvD ledarsida 24/11 2004
Joakim Stymne är chefekonom i Kaupthing bank och verkställande ledamot i Stiftelsen Fritt Näringsliv.

The solution is a tax rise
Stephen Cecchetti Financial Times November 23 2004

Den kraftiga dollarförsvagningen kan få negativa konsekvenser på svensk export.
Electrolux, SCA och Sandvik bland de mer dollarkänsliga.
DN Ekonomi 23/11 2004

The stock market's pessimism about the dollar's decline is a little perplexing.
Stock traders have traditionally liked a weaker dollar because it helps multinational corporations.
But now the market is focusing on the negative aspects of a struggling greenback
CNBC's Bob Pisani 22/11 2004

Dollar moving in one direction only: down
The risk of a rout, according to Raghuram Rajan, chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, "is not a high probability but it is not zero".
Financial Times November 18 2004

Alan Greenspan triggered fresh falls in the dollar on Friday after issuing a strong warning about the unsustainability of the US current account deficit.
Financial Times 19/11 2004

If the dollar is not allowed to fall against the yuan, it will probably continue to fall heavily against something else.
Europe’s finance ministers can do little about it. They have surrendered control of the currency to an independent central bank that targets inflation, not the exchange rate.
The Economist 19/11 2004

Vaclav Havel:
Kommunistiska ledare hävdade att systemet var resultatet av historiens objektiva lagar, som inte kunde ändras.

Olyckligtvis har inte det sätt att tänka som tjänade som ett stöd för den kommunistiska diktaturen helt försvunnit. En del hävdar att kommunismen bara kollapsade under sin egen tyngd. På nytt förringas individuellt ansvar och individuella handlingar.
Kolumn DN 19/11 2004

Klas Eklunds slutsats är att dollarn kommer att försvagas gradvis men att det inte blir något ras – åtminstone inte under de närmaste åren som är hans prognoshorisont.
SvD Näringsliv 17/11 2004

The world needs another Plaza Accord
There is a point at which one or other central bank will cry "Enough!" and the house of cards will fall.
Peter Bernstein Financial Times November 17 2004
Very Important Article

Dokument inifrån TV2 17/11 2004: Novemberrevolutionen

Dan Josefsson granskar de märkliga turerna kring det kanske största misstaget inom ekonomipolitiken som gjorts i Sverige - avregleringen av kreditmarknaden i november 1985. Beslutet togs under kuppartade former av några få sammansvurna. Men allt gick fel. Resultatet blev en katastrof och Sverige hamnade i den värsta krisen sedan 1930-talet.
Hur kunde det gå så illa?
Varför var det ingen som bromsade innan det var för sent? Vem bär ansvaret?
Läs mer här med länk till svt.se

The Bush administration has apparently decided that letting the dollar slide is a good way to shrink America's trade deficit.
During the Bush years, 92 percent of the nearly $1 trillion increase in publicly held debt has been financed by foreign lenders.
New York Times/IHT 15/11 2004

Den 19 januari ger Martin Wolf den årliga Sven Rydenfelt-föreläsningen i Lund hos Timbro.
Martin Wolf - Sven Rydenfeldt

The dollar is likely to fall further.
This is creating more dilemmas for Europe than for America
The real question is not whether the dollar needs to fall, but how drastic the economic effects of its fall will be.
From The Economist print edition Nov 11th 2004

Dollarn måste falla med 30-40 procent
Det menar amerikanske ekonomen Barry Bosworth, som var bland de första att förutspå kronraset i början av 1990-talet.
Johan Schück DN Ekonomi 12/11 2004

Minus 35 procent på mindre än fyra år dollarn under 7 kr och lägsta nivån någonsin mot euron.
Varför har dollarn inte fallit mer - och snabbare?
Lars-Georg Bergkvist SvD Näringsliv 12/11 2004

Republicans risk disgrace if they raise taxes or if America suffers a financial and inflationary crisis because of its failure to bring the federal budget back under control
Anatole Kaletsky The Times 4/11 2004

Alan Greenspan, will retire shortly. Who will replace him?
One plausible candidate is John Taylor
The Economist 10/11 2004

The U.S. trade gap unexpectedly narrowed in September to $51.6 billion as oil imports fell.
Hurricanes in September that restrained shipments of imported oil may have helped limit the effect of record prices.
Nov. 10 2004 (Bloomberg)

My most certain idea is that real interest rates in the United States will have to be kept low, that the old Taylor rule is out
About bonds that are protected against inflation (TIPS/realräntepapper)
Bill Gross Investment Outlook November 2004

Dollarn har rasat med över 36 procent mot kronan sedan toppnoteringen för drygt tre år sedan på 11:01 kronor.
DN/TT 5/11 2004

The Next Bush Recession?
An Open Letter to Karl Rove

By John Mauldin November 6, 2004

US deficit:
The problem is a global concern
By Maurice Obstfeld and Kenneth Rogoff
Financial Times November 1 2004

US deficit:
It is not only sustainable, it is logical
By Richard Cooper
Financial Times November 1 2004

Dollar at record low against euro
The euro is now 57% above its all-time low
BBC 5/11 2004

Bubbles, crashes and power shifts
One of the fascinating things about the extended media commentary on the 75th anniversary of the Wall Street Crash is that no one has a definitive answer as to the cause.
John Plender Financial Times November 1 2004

There are many reasons to be concerned about the dollar, but the number one reason is the trade deficit.
It is now at $600 billion and rising
I readily acknowledge there are those who say deficits do not matter. In the short term, you can make case for such an argument. But over the long term, I am at a loss to see how you can make such an argument.
John Mauldin, October 29, 2004
Highly recommended

The wolf at the door
A further steep decline in the dollar seems inevitable
The Economist print edition Oct 28th 2004

The dollar has to fall a long way from where it is now, if the current account deficit at full employment is to diminish
Martin Wolf, Financial Times 27/10 2004

Dollar Adjustment: How Far? Against What?
C. Fred Bergsten and John Williamson, editors
Institute for International Economics

Wall Street Collapses
Near-panic seized stock traders today in the wildest session Wall Street has ever seen.
International Herald Tribune Oct. 24, 1929

Hayek - Marknadsekonomins intellektuella portalgestalt
Peter Stein, civilekonom och författare, Smedjan 2004-10-21

How can we be sure we don't have a recession coming in 2005?
Achieving only trend growth required tax cuts and a negative real fed-funds rates that generated record low mortgage rates and cash out refinancings
John Makin, Wall Street Journal 19/10 2004

”Det finns en bristande probleminsikt. Inom fem år kan /USA:s/ utlandsskuld nå 50 procent av BNP.
Det skapar en stor sårbarhet för räntehöjningar.
Jag förstår inte hur man kan se underskotten som ett långsiktigt problem”
Cecilia Hermansson, ekonom på Föreningssparbanken
Veckans Affärer nr 43, 18/10 2004, reporter Ragnar Roos

"USA har ryckt åt sig ett stort försprång och har världens mest framgångsrika ekonomi"
Klas Eklund på SvD:s ledarsida 2000-08-11

The dollar fell below $1.26 per euro for the first time since February
Bloomberg 20/10 2004

The “stagflation” (economic stagnation alongside roaring inflation) that was common in the 1970s is now a worry once again.
The Economist 19/10 2004

The orgy of tax-cutting, with big revenue losses, continues unabated.
The answer is not tariffs, exchange rate changes or subsidies
The proper way is for the government to consolidate its finances and move deliberately towards running surpluses
Ronald McKinnon, professor of economics at Stanford University, Financial Times 21/10 2004

A Deficit America Can Live With
The American current account deficit is an indicator of the strength and vitality of the U.S. economy.
David Frum, A former special assistant to President Bush for economic speechwriting (2001-2002),
Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute, National Post (Canada) October 5, 2004

P-O Edin: Skillnaden mellan dagens arbetslöshet och den arbetslöshet som är förenlig med stabila priser (Nairu)... är 1,5-2 procent
DN 16/10 med många länkar adderade

The US dollar crashed on Friday
through its well-worn trading range against the euro, sliding to a seven-month low
Financial Times 15/10 2004

This year's Nobel prize honours two economists
Edward Prescott, of Arizona State University, and a Norwegian, Finn Kydland, of Carnegie Mellon University, honours research that has helped improve the practice of economic policy, as well as economists' understanding of booms and busts.
The Economist 14/10 2004

The U.S. trade gap in August rose to $54.04 billion
Markets were expecting a trade shortfall of $51.50 billion
Reuters 14/10 2004

Ny version - nu med tabeller och diagaram
Varför försvarades den fasta kronkursen så kraftfullt under hösten 1992?

Inget annat land uppvisade en liknande beslutsamhet när det gällde att söka stå kvar vid den fasta växelkursen. Storbritannien, Italien och Finland såg sig tvingade att övergå till rörlig växelkurs denna månad.
Sverige avvek från detta mönster genom att det svenska politiska etablissemanget slöt upp bakom den fasta kursen.
Den ekonomiska krisen i Finland och Sverige. Uppgången, fallet och återhämtningen 1985-2000
Lars Jonung m fl 2004

Four Nordic nations are placed in the top six for growth prospects, along with the US and Taiwan, in a survey of 101 countries in the World Economic Forum's annual review of global competitiveness.
Finland is ranked first, followed by the US, Sweden, Taiwan, Denmark and Norway.
Financial Times 13/10 2004

”Jag har aldrig trott på Lenin”
Marit Paulsen i TCO-Tidningen nr 2/1990

Nobelpristagare ekonomi 2004
Finn K. Kydland
Edward C. Prescott

Hiv och aids är biologiska vapen - tillverkade för att utrota den svarta rasen. Det hävdar kenyanskan Wangari Maathai som i går fick Nobels fredspris.
Aftonbladet 9/10 2004
http://www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=2642

Assistant Minister Prof Wangari Maathai yesterday claimed that HIV/Aids was a biological weapon manufactured by the developed world to wipe out the Black race from developing countries.
East African Standard 31/8 2004 (from Google cache 9/10 2004)

Det mesta talar för att man i framtidens skolböcker kommer att läsa om socialismen att den var en idériktning som samlade stora skaror anhängare under tiden 1880—1980 men senare vittrade bort på samma sätt som andra frälsningsläror har gjort och kommer att göra. Socialismen kommer att visa sig vara en av de många historiens idéströmningar som med tiden avslöjades inte som vägen till framtiden, utan en återvändsgränd. En återvändsgränd som slutar vid en mur.
Ur Rolf Englund, Rosornas Krig, Timbro, 1984

Dallas Fed president Robert McTeer warned that “Over time, there is only one way for the dollar to go - lower”. Just for good measure, he also talked about the theoretical possibility of a “crisis” precipitating “rapidly rising interest rates and a rapidly depreciating dollar” if and when the wider world stops funding the rapidly expanding US current account deficit.
Financial Times 9/10 2004

Det är väl inte bara Ohly som borde skämmas?

Det är väl inte bara Ohly som borde skämmas?

De omkring 3 500 deltagarna samlades i stora mässhallen till en öppningsceremoni med följande program. Den röda fanan (kör och unisont) under innmarsch av en fana. Arbetets söner (unisont) Tal av partiordförande Olof Palme Potpurri på arbetarsånger Tal av FNL:s representant Madame Thi Binh, PRR:s utrikesminister och chefförhandlare i Paris Befria Södern, FNL:s nationalsång (kör och unisont)
SAP 1972

Talman Birgitta Dahl gjorde förra lördagen något ovanligt i svensk politik: erkände att hon hade haft fel (DN 23/8) Hon hade plågats av att hon "inte tillräckligt snabbt begrep och tog avstånd från Pol Pot-regimens grymheter Efter 20 års betänketid var tillfället inne att göra slut på detta själsliga lidande.
Mats Johansson i Sv D 97-09-01 En talmans ursäkter

Reformeringen av arbetsrätten måste syfta till att stärka arbetets, löntagarnas ställning på arbetsplatserna. Den skall ge de fackliga organisationerna bättre möjligheter att i förhandlingar hävda medlemmarnas intressen. Den skall också ge arbetstagarna reella möjligheter att sluta avtal i frågor där arbetsgivarna tidigare, i kraft av paragraf 32, haft ensam beslutanderätt. Men en sådan jämställdhet mellan arbete och kapital kan inte vara slutmålet för den ekonomiska demokratin. Det skulle innebära att ett fåtal kapitalägare gavs samma rätt till inflytande som miljoner löntagare, och att kapital och arbete betraktas som jämbördiga produktionsfaktorer. Fackföreningsrörelsen avvisar en sådan syn. Det mänskliga arbetet måste sättas främst.
Ur LO-styrelsens (landssekretariatets) remissvar den 7 juli 1975 på betänkandet “Demokrati på arbetsplatsen” med förslag till medbestämmandelagen (MBL).


With a couple of little tricks at its disposal, the government has made a practice of understating inflation, and by extension, overstating GDP and productivity.

- about "an important article by Pimco's high-profile portfolio manager Bill Gross
Bill Fleckenstein, CNBC 4/10 2004

Politicians are failing not only to enthuse voters, but they are silent on the biggest challenge
In the past 12 years 200 million people from the west of China have moved to industrial areas within 100 miles of the Pacific.
They have acquired advanced technologies and high skills.
It is the equivalent of adding another Germany, France and Britain to the potential workforce of Europe, at less than 10 per cent of European labour costs.
William Rees-Mogg The Times 4/10 2004

Man kan inte bomba fram demokrati eller hålla allmänna val i kulregn. Ett eskalerat våld mot hatet och motståndet i arabvärlden är ingen lösning för USA och Israel.
Försök förstå drivkrafterna bakom det muslimska motståndet
Stig Ramel, EMU-förespråkare, DN Debatt 1/10 2004

With inflation apparently conquered, it may not be surprising that yields are returning to levels regularly seen in the first half of the 20th century.
This, however, raises the question whether inflation really has been defeated.
Philip Coggan, Financial Times October 2 2004

Det svenska bytesbalansöverskottet
USA har ett underskott i storleksordningen fem procent av BNP
Det svenska överskottet uppgår till över sju procent av BNP

Klas Eklund chefekonom SEB
Ulf Jakobsson chef för Industriens Utredningsinstitut
SvD Brännpunkt 24/9 2004

Någonting har hänt, men vad?
Industrilönerna är nu lägre än i konkurrentländerna och överskottet i bytesbalansen stiger år för år, men investeringarna har sedan länge stagnerat. Pengarna satsas utomlands, inte här.
DN-ledare 30/9 2004

DNs ledare återupptar debatten om Keynes, NAIRU och stabiliseringspolitik - Very Important

The world may face its first-ever global house-price bubble, and if it bursts
it will hurt economies much more than the collapse in share prices did at the start of this decade

The Economist 30/9 2004

IMF: The question is not whether the US deficit will adjust
- it will - but when and how

BBC 29/9 2004

Oil and Stagflation
Given that the Chinese currency is pegged to the dollar, the Fed serves as central bank both for the United States and China.
/Inte bra med fast växelkurs, remember 1992/
eighteen to twenty-four months of negative real interest rates contributed to the sharp increase in growth rates in both countries
John H. Makin, AEI, August, 2004

Normalization Means Higher Inflation
John H. Makin, AEI, July, 2004

"Risk för global kris"
Morgan Stanleys chefsekonom varnar för sammanbrott i världsekonomin
DN 9/9 2004 Reporter Johan Schück

Stand by for a pensions bail-out
A re-run of the S & L disaster
John Plender Financial Times 13/9 2004


The Dollar

The risks ahead for the world economy
Fred Bergsten The Economist print edition Sep 9th 2004
Fred Bergsten is director of the Institute for International Economics in Washington. His book, “The United States and the World Economy: Foreign Economic Policy for the Next Administration” is forthcoming.
Very Important Article

Rolf Englunds site om gamla radioapparater
- i första hand Grundig 50-tal

Text H

Bubbles are getting blown out of all proportion
The monetary moralists preaching inevitable doom for the US economy because the Fed dared to stabilise the economy after the bubble's collapse are simply wrong
Adam Posen Financial Times 8/9 2004
The writer is a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics

Carl Bildt fortsatte att hävda att det inte rörde sig om någon bankkris utan bara en Nordbankskris
Några dagar senare träffades en uppgörelse som i realiteten räddade bankerna och kreditinstituten från kollaps
Källa: Ingvar Carlsson, Så tänkte jag Hjalmarsson & Högberg 2003

Varför försvarades den fasta kronkursen så kraftfullt under hösten 1992?
Inget annat land uppvisade en liknande beslutsamhet när det gällde att söka stå kvar vid den fasta växelkursen. Storbritannien, Italien och Finland såg sig tvingade att övergå till rörlig växelkurs denna månad.
Sverige avvek från detta mönster genom att det svenska politiska etablissemanget slöt upp bakom den fasta kursen.
Den ekonomiska krisen i Finland och Sverige. Uppgången, fallet och återhämtningen 1985-2000
Lars Jonung m fl 2004

Mer om krisen 1992

Ingvar Carlsson om kronkursförsvaret 1992:
- I efterhand står det klart vad läget egentligen krävde. Det fanns en snabb och effektiv åtgärd som i tid hade kunnat få läget under kontroll. Jag anser att den fasta växelkursen borde ha släppts och följts av en kraftig räntehöjning.


En bilarbetare på Opels fabrik i tyska Rüsselsheim är 50 procent dyrare än sin kollega i Trollhättan
Det visar en sammanställning som Teknikföretagen gjort för Rapport.
Inklusive sociala avgifter blir det 209 kr/tim för en svensk arbetare medan en tysk arbetare kostar 305 kr/tim.
Rapport 7/9 2004

Nouriel Roubini's Global Macroeconomic and Financial Policy Site
(ranked as the #1 Web Site in Economics in the world by The Economist Magazine)

Dagens Nyheter 6 september 2004:
Carl Bildt var stjärna som statsminister

Sommaren 1997 när Carl Bildt återvände till svensk politik efter uppdragen i Bosnien åtnjöt Bildt större och bredare förtroende i det svenska samhället än någonsin tidigare. Han var den självklare statsministerkandidaten och han kom hem för att återta regeringsmakten.
Den kraftmätningen vann Göran Persson, redan långt före valet. Bildt lyckades inte förvalta sitt upparbetade förtroendekapital.
Utmaningen /mot Persson/ stod och föll med en stjärnspelare /Carl Bildt/.
När han presterade under sin förmåga - den han tidigare visat som statsminister - och långt under den nivå som förväntades av honom vid återkomsten fanns inte mycket kvar att erbjuda väljarna .

Ingvar Carlsson om kronkursförsvaret 1992:
- I efterhand står det klart vad läget egentligen krävde. Det fanns en snabb och effektiv åtgärd som i tid hade kunnat få läget under kontroll. Jag anser att den fasta växelkursen borde ha släppts och följts av en kraftig räntehöjning.

Klicka här

US consumer spending rose 0.8% - incomes rose 0.1%
BBC 30/8 2004

EMU-profeterna får stå i skamvrån
I dag framstår många av argumenten som kraftiga överdrifter, säger Lars Calmfors, professor i nationalekonomi vid Stockholms Universitet.
Ekot 28/8 2004

Swift Boat Veterans for Truth

America's dangerous deficit
Since the high and rising US current account deficit is one of the most remarkable features of the world economy, deciding whether it matters is of some significance
Martin Wolf, Financial Times August 24 2004

The US Current Account Deficit and the Euro Area
Edwin M. Truman, Institute for International Economics July 2, 2004

Mattias Bengtsson slutar som chef för Timbro
Timbro 2004-08-23

Timbros ägare -
Stiftelsen Fritt Näringsliv

Finansmannen Mats Qviberg har bytt fot i EMU-frågan och säger nu att han ska rösta nej. En viktig orsak är "de dagliga utspelen och brösttonerna" från ja-sidans företrädare.
"Jag bestämde mig i onsdags när jag lyssnade på Jens Spendrup."
Dagens Industri 6/9 2003

Sanningen om da Vinci-koden
Expressen 20/8 2004

Dan Brown site
Click here

Financial Times; Jan 02, 2003
As the late Herbert Stein, former chairman of the US council of economic advisers, once said:
"If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."

With Lou Dobbs, CNN, Friday, August 20, 2004 Paul Roberts, author of "The End of Oil" says the global supply of oil is being depleted at an alarming rate.
He tells us which energy sources will replace oil.

 

If Asian central banks stopped financing the US current account deficit, the euro's exchange rate would shoot through the roof to the detriment of the eurozone economy.
Wolfgang Munchau Financial Times July 26 2004

America on the comfortable path to ruin
These two facts - the rest of the world's surplus output and the US goal of full employment - explain the global macro-economic picture
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, August 18 2004
Very Important Article

Som att prata dricks i baren på Titanic
För en människa är hundra år mycket. För en geolog är oljeålderns sekund snart över.
Björn Lindahl, SvD Näringsliv 18/8 2004

Greenspan is running out of buttons to push
Peter Hartcher, Financial Times, August 10 2004
The writer is international editor at The Sydney Morning Herald and a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. He is author of a forthcoming book on Alan Greenspan and Wall Street, entitled Bubble Man

The US economy has grown reasonably fast since the second half of 2003 and the general expectation seems to be that satisfactory growth will continue more or less indefinitely.
The expansion may, indeed, continue through 2004 and for some time beyond. But... it will certainly not happen without a cut in domestic absorption of goods and services by the US which would impart a deflationary impulse to the rest of the world
Wynne Godley et al, The Levy Economics Institute, July 2004

En ny bostadsbubbla skulle innebära att priserna faller dramatiskt i de regioner där priserna stigit som mest.
Bengt Turner ser dock ingen anledning till panik.
DN 14/8 2004

The vigour of America's expansion is once again in doubt
Is America's economy in trouble? With oil prices hitting new highs of over $45 a barrel this week, and with the latest figures showing a measly 32,000 new jobs created in July, the question is fraying nerves on Wall Street and in the White House.
The Economist 12/8 2004

Det är möjligt att den västerländska civilisationen nådde sin höjdpunkt 1965, någonstans mellan "Hylands hörna" och studentupproret 1968.
Det anser i alla fall Carl Hamilton i sin uppmärksammade nya debattbok om vår tids syn på barn och föräldraskap, "Det infantila samhället" (Prisma).
Henrik Berggren, DN 13/8 2004

Concern over the softening of global economic expansion heightened on Friday with data showing the US trade deficit at new record levels, lack of vigour in Europe and an abrupt slowdown in growth in Japan
Economists said the figures showed the world was still relying on US consumer demand, with other big economies unable to generate sustained increases in demand at home.
Financial Times 13/8 2004

BBC: The US trade deficit has unexpectedly swollen by 19% to a record $55.8bn in June
BBC 13/8 2004

The most basic index of performance is real gross domestic product per hour worked ("productivity").
The gap between USA and Europe appeared early in the 19th century and continued to widen until about 1950. For most of the subsequent period Europe has been catching up.
Samuel Brittan Financial Times 29/7 2003

 

There are big medium-term risks ahead
Global macroeconomic imbalances, the impact of a rising Asia, protectionism and vulnerability to terrorist outrages
Martin Wolf 20/7 2004

 

Debt and the dollar, employment and interest rates, the US economy and world trade, money supply and inflation/deflation,taxes, deficits, commodity prices, politics, war, regulation plus a host of other variables.
They are all related in a very complex and dynamic fashion
.
Changing one of them may change each of the others in often unpredictable ways, which in turn affect all the others.
Today, we start a series trying to understand how they fit together
The Supercycle of Debt -- Economic Commentary by John Mauldin
Free Republic

 

Inflated expectations

The Economist 1/7 2003

 
   
   
   

Vad spelar tillgångspriser och krediter för roll i penningpolitiken
Förste vice riksbankschef Eva Srejber 2004-06-30

Are markets about to start panicking about the dollar again - with good reason?
The Economist 30/6 2004

The Asset Economy
The income-driven impetus of yesteryear has increasingly given way to asset-driven wealth effects. For consumers, businesses, policymakers, and investors, the asset economy turns many of the old macro rules inside out
Stephen Roach Morgan Stanley 21/6 2004

Anatole Kaletsky:
On the very day when Gordon Brown became the longest-serving Chancellor since William Gladstone, the Governor of the Bank of England issued his sternest warning so far about the dangers of the present boom in house prices
The Times 17/6 2004

 

The threat of extreme events
Kenneth Rogoff, formerly chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, believes there is a high risk of a housing slump in the US
Samuel Brittan Financial Times June 18 2004

 

US current account deficit widens to $1.5bn a day
Financial Times June 18 2004

 

Americas trade gap is growing again.
Worse, it may be extremely hard to close it without causing much economic pain - and not just for Americans
The Economist 22/6 2004

 

The US trade deficit grew 3.8% to hit a fresh record of $48.3bn in April
BBC 14/6 2004

 

Beware bursting of the money bubble
David Hale Financial Times May 30 2004

Sekterismen inget exklusivt religiöst, kristet eller frikyrkligt problem
Inte minst i politiken, där "vi mot dem" är en del av affärsidén
SvD-ledare 13/5 2004

The US trade deficit widened to a record $46 billion in March
CNBC 12/5 2004

De farliga jasägarna
Den homogena och slutna beslutsgruppen utvecklar en självcensur - man lyssnar till ledaren, en anpassningsprocess sätter i gång, alternativa analyser stängs ute. Kraven på samförstånd och enighet är det dominerande.
Inga-Britt Ahlenius kolumn DN 12/5 2004

The unravelling mystery
The prime driver of recent market volatility has been the unwinding of the "carry trade" - räntearbitrage
For the past year or so, speculators had been taking advantage of ultra-low US interest rates to borrow in dollars and invest in more lucrative opportunities elsewhere.
By Philip Coggan, FT 11/5 2004

Om det inte skall hållas folkomröstning, skall det då göras grundlagsändring med mellanliggande val?
Rolf Englund, inlägg DNs ledarsida 11/5 2004

DN svarar Englund
Tre fjärdedels majoritet är ett strikt krav och en minst lika god garant för demokratisk förankring som beslut av två riksdagar med val emellan
DN-ledare 11/5 2004

Warren Buffett
"Vi tror att dollarn kommer att tappa i värde i förhållande till andra större valutor"
Inför närmare 20.000 aktieägare på Berkshire Hathaways årsmöte i Omaha, Nebraska meddelade han därför sin intention att göra slut på investmentbolagets ansenliga kassa på 36 miljarder dollar, motsvarande 274 miljarder kronor, så snabbt som möjligt.
DI 3/5 2004

 

Just as certain as death and taxes is the knowledge that we shall one day be forced to learn to live without oil.
BBC 19/4 2004

 

In the late 1990s, Greenspan decided to ignore the growing bubble in technology stock prices.
By engineering negative real interest rates - that is, rates lower than the inflation rate - Greenspan has bolstered the economy at the risk of encouraging speculation.
Floyd Norris, International Herald Tribune 16/4 2004

 

A housing market collapse draws nearer
Martin Wolf, Financial Times 16/4 2004

 

John Makin, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington:
The blissful combination of higher growth and lower inflation that has characterized the U.S. economy since last spring is the inverse of stagflation, the nightmare scenario that followed the oil shock of 1973-74 Still lower inflation is a distinct possibility.
John Makin AEI 29/1 2004
- We are nearing the end of a benign, unusual period of faster growth and lower inflation and moving into a period of slower growth and higher inflation
John Makin IHT 15/4 2004
Klicka här

 

Say's Law
America Demands; China Supplies
John H. Makin, March 19, 2004

 

Is the house price bubble set to burst?
London fund manager Tony Dye lived up to his nickname of "Dr Doom" by forecasting that the present property boom would "end in tears".
BBC 15/4 2004

 

Avoiding a housing crash
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, so the growing band of pundits predicting a plunge in house prices may soon be seen as prophets
Daily Telegraph 14/4 2004

 

Those with a memory of what happens when a bubble bursts know that, if history is any guide, the bear market that began in 2000 is not over - not by a long shot.
By Maggie Mahar Financial Times April 11 2004 19:36
The writer is the author of Bull! A History of the Boom, 1982-1999 (HarperBusiness)

 

Low rates are the problem, not the cure
Cheap money is why the dollar is falling, precious metals are rising and homebuyers are in danger. The longer the Fed waits, the worse the damage
Bill Fleckenstein CNBC 22/3 2004

Johan Lybeck: Räntan borde istället höjas tycker han
Hans Lindberg, prognoschef på Konjunkturinstitutet: Sedan har vi naturligtvis hushållens upplåning, men tittar man på hushållens ränteutgifter som andel av deras inkomster är de fortfarande ganska små.
Ekot 26/3 2004

The terrorist enemy holds no territory, defends no population, is unconstrained by rules of warfare, and respects no law of morality. Such an enemy cannot be deterred, contained, appeased, or negotiated with. It can only be destroyed.
Vice President Dick Cheney at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, March 17, 2004

 

BMW bets on dollar rebound
BMW, the German luxury carmaker, has stopped all long-term hedging of the dollar, calling an end to the US currency's two-year decline.
Financial Times, March 17 2004, 19:35

 

HP to sell Linux-based computers
The world's largest computer maker has announced plans to sell computers equipped with the open-source Linux operating system. HP will ship the desktop computers to China, India and other Asian countries later this year.
BBC 17/3 2004

Medianhuspriset i Stockholm skulle sänkas med hela 600.000 kronor om räntan var 3 procentenheter högre
enligt en analys från Föreningssparbanken,
DI 16/3 2004

The jobs picture is even worse than it seems
And despite what the experts say, inflation is out there, and we’re feeling it already.

Bill Fleckenstein, CNBC 15/3 2004

Per Ahlmarks bok:
Det är demokratin, dumbom!

The U.S. trade deficit widened to a record $43.1 billion in January
Exports fell 1.2 percent, the biggest drop since August, and imports were the second highest on record
March 10 2004 (Bloomberg)

The first Arab Human Development Report
(som Ahlmark skriver om)

The failure of the US economic recovery, now more than two years old, to produce meaningful job growth has generated much talk about its political consequences.
It could undermine President George W. Bush's re-election prospects, and it certainly seems to be contributing to the national alarm about outsourcing, trade and overseas investment.
But the bigger concern is that it may be starting to threaten the strength and even the sustainability of the recovery itself.
Financial Times editorial 9/3 2004

 

Berkshire Hathaway, the insurance and holding company run by legendary investor
Warren Buffett, amassed a record cash pile of $36bn in 2003 as the world's second-richest man once again shied away from rising stock markets
Financial Times 8/3 2004

 

Last week, Alan Greenspan was a study in contradiction.
On Monday, he extolled the virtues of the levered-up homeowner to a credit union conference. The next day, in a speech to the Senate Banking Committee, he was singing a different tune altogether. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant providers of mortgage capital, he warned, "are expanding at a pace beyond that consistent with systemic safety," and that "preventative actions are required sooner, rather than later."
The views and opinions expressed in Bill Fleckenstein's columns are his own and not necessarily those of
CNBC on MSN Money - 1/3 2004

Varning för global bubbla
I botten på problematiken ligger att Fed har hållit styrräntan på en rekordlåg nivå efter att it-bubblan sprack 2000
Cecilia Skingsley, Dagens Industri 8/3 2004

On Tuesday, Argentina must repay $3.1bn to the International Monetary Fund
Mr Kirchner has said he will default on the loan unless he receives prior assurance from the IMF that it will approve a disbursement linked to the country's three-year agreement that would cover the loan
Financial Times 8/3 2004

fundera ut hur vi moderater skall utforma ett lågskattesamhälle som är så lockande för en majoritet av valmanskåren att det kan genomföras. Om vi moderater inte kan presentera ett sådant förslag kommer vi heller aldrig att i verkligheten kunna sänka skatten.

Den som vill sänka skatten i verkligheten måste ägna sina tankar åt verkligheten. Herr Ordförande, Det vore inte mycket idé att orda om några MUF-ares jippon här i Österåker om det inte vore så att deras handlande visar på ett problem som vi inom moderaterna har att hantera.
Det handlar om att ledningen för moderaterna de senaste åren har låtit kartan, inte verkligheten, vara alltför styrande för sitt handlande.
Rolf Englund (m) i Österåkers kommunfullmäktige 1998-12-14

Hayek's Challenge:
An Intellectual Biography of F.A. Hayek By Bruce Caldwell

Economist about the book 4/3 2004

I Ekonomisk Debatt nr 7 2003 argumenterar Anders Borg för att finanspolitiken bör ges en tydligare institutionell ram. Han förundras också över svenska ekonomers keynesfobi
Martin Flodén, Ekonomisk Debatt nr 1/2004

Höj omedelbart styrräntan drastiskt - från 1,0 till 3,0 procent!
Annars är risken överhängande för att nya spekulationsbubblor blåses upp i den amerikanska ekonomin.

Den varningen utfärdar Stephen Roach, global chefsekonom vid en av världens största investmentbank, Morgan Stanley
Lars-Georg Bergkvist, SvD Näringsliv 2/3 2004

 

The fall in real yields
Rising real yields may come as a nasty shock to the stock market
By Philip Coggan, Investment Editor FT.com site; Feb 23, 2004

The dollar, said John Connolly, treasury secretary to Richard Nixon, "is our currency, but your problem".
Gerhard Schröder, Germany's chancellor, knows what he meant
A world in which macroeconomic health can be achieved only at the expense of ever greater private and public debt accumulation in its biggest and richest economy is unstable. It is also perverse.
Martin Wolf, Financial Times 1/3 2004

The dollar has hit a series of historic lows against just about every currency.
BBC News Online explains.

The dollar seems likely to fall: betting just how far is one of the best ways imaginable to lose even more money.
BBC 18/2 2004

The coming storm
With markets apparently safer, banks are trading ever-greater amounts in search of higher returns. Expect trouble
The Economist 19/2 2004

Asia will not rethink currencies soon
Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 18/2 2004

The blissful combination of higher growth and lower inflation that has characterized the U.S. economy since last spring is the inverse of stagflation, the nightmare scenario that followed the oil shock of 1973-74
Still lower inflation is a distinct possibility.
John Makin AEI 29/1 2004

The 7 stages of a dollar crisis
The inevitable crisis will inflict damage, but those who see where we are headed can protect themselves beforehand.
Bill Fleckenstein, CNBC 16/2 2004

Inflation in the US has hit its lowest level for nearly 38 years, according to the latest official data.
Last week, minutes from a meeting of the US Federal Reserve showed it thought it was likely that inflation would remain low for "the next year or two"
BBC 16/12 2004

The US january trade deficit widened by more than expected, from $38.4 to $42.5bn
Overall in 2003, exports totalled $1,018bn and imports reached $1,507bn, giving a deficit in goods and services deficit of $489.4 billion, $71.3 billion more than the 2002
Financial Times 13/2 2004

The recent performance of inflation has been especially notable in view of the substantial depreciation of the dollar in 2003.
Ordinarily, currency depreciation is accompanied by a rise in dollar prices of imported goods and services
Chairman Alan Greenspan, February 11, 2004

"Det mest sannolika", skriver han, "är att vi får se ett börsras utan like följt av ett sammanbrott för dollarn, en händelsekedja som kan tänkas göra slut på USA:s imperieställning".
Carl Johan Gardell, SvD Kultur 17/2 2004

The current-account deficit basically reflects America's lack of saving, by both households and the government
Not only is the government's budget deficit set to soar to a record $520 billion (almost 5% of GDP) this year, but the personal saving rate fell to only 1.3% of income in December, thanks to rampant consumer borrowing.
The Economist 5/2 2004

 

Did President Ronald Reagan really prove that deficits do not matter?
Stephen Cecchetti, Financial Times 2/2 2004

 

Dollar's threat to eurozone
One question came up again and again at the recent meeting of the World Economic Forum at Davos: why are the Europeans not more worried about the dollar?
A sharp depreciation of the dollar would be the kind of shock that could mercilessly expose the weaknesses of the eurozone's system of economic governance.
Wolfgang Munchau, Financial Times 1/2 2004

 

There is a big risk that the current “easy money” policy is spilling over into inflation in the price of shares and houses.
Rising asset prices are encouraging already over-indebted households to borrow yet more to invest in already-pricey assets
The Economist 30/1 2004

 

Martin Wolf: IMF must stand up to blackmail - Argentina
Financial Times January 27 2004

Bildt-regeringen, drabbades av historiens hittills värsta valutakris
Ingvar Carlsson menar nu att man tidigare borde ha släppt växelkursen fri och chockhöjt räntan
Carlsson förde en "dåraktig politik" replikerar nu Feldt finkänsligt
Bror Perjus, DN Kultur 23/1 2004

US government will run up a budget deficit of nearly $500bn in 2004 - the largest in US history in absolute terms, 5% of GDP
BBC 27/1 2004
Highly recommended - good links

Sakta men säkert stärks kronan och närmar sig åter nio kronor mot euron och sju kronor mot dollarn.
Det våras för kronan. Det är en uppfattning som delas av såväl Trading Strategy inom SEB Merchant Banking som merparten av ett femtiotal stora aktörer på valutamarknaden.
SEB 20/1 2004

The dogs of Davos don't bark at the real dangers
continuing overoptimism about Europe, a Democrat in the White House, inflation
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times January 22, 2004

På ett år har euron stärkts med 20 procent mot den amerikanska dollarn. På två år är motsvarande siffra hela 30 procent. Är detta ett problem för Europa?
Peter Wolodarski, DN 2004-01-17

Just why the fall of the currency should matter so much is shown by a decomposition of the demand contributions to eurozone growth over the past three years.
Private consumption has failed to contribute more than a percentage point to year-on-year growth since the first quarter of 2001. The most powerful source of demand for the eurozone was net exports
Martin Wolf, Financial Times 14/1 2004

"Ingvar Carlssons invändning är att jag förbigår hans "huvudtes" att det var avregleringen som drev fram krisen och inte svag finanspolitik. Visst var det så, det är vi eniga om, men ... "
Lars Jonung, kolumn DN, 10/1 2004

 

Sverige passerade både Finland, Japan och Australien i välståndsligan för 2002.
Sveriges köpkraftskorrigerade BNP låg 9 procent över OECD-genomsnittet

Dagens Industri 9/1 2004

 

The US current account deficit was $135bn - in the third quarter
Financial Times 16/12 2003

The dollar's recent slide should have been easy to predict
House prices are still rising, but the record suggests that property is now a screaming sell.
The Economist print edition Dec 30th 2003

The dangers of the dollar's decline
Current account deficits and deflationary pressure are being shifted from the US towards other high-income countries. Among the most endangered is an already feeble eurozone
Martin Wolf, Financial Times December 17 2003
Very Important Article

There is, for the moment, little evidence of stress in funding U.S. current account deficits.
Chairman Alan Greenspan, November 20, 2003

/Herbert/ Stein's Law:
If something cannot go on for ever it will stop.

America's trade deficit has hit a new record annual high of $490.8bn.
BBC 12/12 2003

The dollar has hit a series of historic lows against just about every currency.
BBC News Online explains, 9/12 2003

När Per Unckel prickades av KU var Skandias informationschef Odd Eiken "statssekreteraren från Gramma"
Granskning av statsrådens tjänsteutövning och regeringsärendenas handläggning 1994/95: KU30

Women, gay people and minorities
The permissive society was born, demanding freedom from constraints on sexual behaviour, drug use and hair length. Women, gay people and minorities stepped up their struggle for emancipation. And authority - the idea of being told what to think or do - went into terminal decline, along with other constraints on people's behaviour such as duty, tradition, responsibility, manners, discipline, decorum and shame.
By Richard Tomkins, Financial Times; Nov 07, 2003

 

Net inflows of investment into American bonds and shares plunged from $50 billion in August to only $4 billion in September, the lowest level since the crisis caused by the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management in October 1998.
The Economist 20/11 2003

Rubin säger att "tvillingunderskotten" sammantaget utgör ett "mycket allvarligt hot mot USA:s framtida ekonomiska välstånd".
DN Ekonomi 21/11 2003

1986 the US twin deficits reached about 9 per cent of gross domestic product. Currently, the twin deficits are about 10 per cent of US GDP - and on a rising trend.
The subsequent narrowing of the imbalance was accompanied by a 50 per cent decline in the dollar's trade-weighted value between 1985 and 1987.
Lex, Financial Times 20/11 2003

 

No inflation?
The Fed says it can't find much inflation anywhere. Consumers might argue otherwise

"owners' equivalent rent of primary residence" - bostadsposten spökar äver här
Bond investors have been steadily buying Treasury inflation-protected securities
By Justin Lahart, CNN/Money Senior Writer November 14, 2003

Greed, fraud, credulity and the bull market
By Philip Coggan Financial Times; Oct 23, 2003
BULL! A HISTORY OF THE BOOM, 1982-1999
What drove the breakneck market and what every investor needs to know about financial cycles
By Maggie Mahar
Harper Business, £16.85

Varför har Ingvar Carlsson dröjt så länge med att berätta sin version?
Det har många undrat efter att den tidigare statsministern Ingvar Carlsson nyligen kommit ut med sina memoarer.
Citat även av Kjell-Olof Feldt och Bengt Dennis
Gunnar Örn, Dagens Industri 6/10 2003

A fall in the dollar was "unavoidable", Mr Duisenberg said in an interview
But he "prayed" it would be gradual.

Financial Times 6/10 2003

Psykiatrireformen
Signerad Carl Bildt och Bo Könberg


 

Det säger mycket om borgerlighetens problem och om The Economists genomslag i debatten. Det är svårt att tänka sig någon annan publikation (utom möjligtvis New York Times) som skulle få tillåtelse att använda riksdagens finaste lokaler för marknadsföring av sitt senaste nummer.
Det finns inget i analysen som är nytt, oväntat eller uppseendeväckande för en svensk publik.

Peter Wolodarski DN 12/6 2003

Från folkhem till fattigstuga
SvD-ledare 12/6 2003

 

"Varning för husras"
Peter Wolodarski, signerat, DNs ledarsida 6/6 2003

 

Trots oron på arbetsmarknaden fortsätter de svenska hushållen att öka sina skulder - med över 9 procent i årstakt. Lånen går mest till att köpa bostäder.
DI 4/6 2003

The new economy may already be history
If productivity continues to grow at this pace, the new economy will prove to be just a blip in a longer period of slow growth.

By Dean Baker FT June 1 2003

 

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.
Martin Wolf Financial Times 28/5 2003

 

A complete deflation of the bubble will occur only when financial conditions tighten globally, particularly in the US. A "financial" tightening can be either the result of higher inflation, or overt monetary policy tightening by central banks. Either outcome would reduce the real liquidity available to support financial asset prices. In the current context, no overt monetary policy tightening is imminent. Nor is it likely as long as economies remain subdued. Logically, therefore, the asset bubble will fully collapse only when inflation becomes a factor, however unlikely such an occurrence may seem to most observers at present.
Inflation is a bigger danger than deflation
By Tim Lee Financial Times May 27 2003
The writer is an economist. He is author of the forthcoming Why the Markets Went Crazy

Face masks, deserted airports, quarantines, school closures, cancelled conferences and holidays - has it all been a hysterical over-reaction?
No: it has been worse. It has been a grave under-reaction.

Daniel Haydon and Olivia Judson
Financial Times May 8 2003

Into a new era
Last week was a watershed in the history of monetary policy.
Thirty years of overriding attention to inflation are at an end.

The world's most important central banks - the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank - admitted that inflation might fall too low.
By Martin Wolf
Financial Times May 13 2003 19:54

Några citat ur den av Ja-sidans ledande kampanjorganisation Sverige i Europa utgivna skriften med titeln "Det finns inget nja till euron" av
Mats Svegfors: Personligen är jag på framförallt ekonomisk-tekniska grunder tveksam till den gemensamma valutan.
Och jag anser inte att det svenska beslutet borde fattas nu
.
Rolf Englund 23/4 2003

 

Sverige tycks ha hamnat i en "skuldfälla", ansåg Bengt Rydén, som ständigt haft den värdefulla förmågan att ha rätt åsikt vid rätt tidpunkt.
Låneskulden i utlandet 719 miljarder förra året, skriver Englund
Svenska Dagbladet, Näringsliv, Ord mot Ord, 91-05-30

 

Den akuta krisen 1990-93 framstår som den oundvikliga konsekvensen av magnifika misstag i den ekonomiska politiken.
Lars Jonung, kolumn DN, 9/3 2003

A European investor, for example, would have lost 43 per cent over the past year with an investment in the S&P 500 index, compared with a 28 per cent drop in US dollar terms.
Financial Times Editorial 8/3 2003

Warren Buffett, the influential investor, warned derivatives were “financial weapons of mass destruction” and that they were “potentially lethal” to the economic system. .
Financial Times 4/3 2003

Ny ekonomisk rådgivare åt president George W. Bush
Professor N. Gregory Mankiw

The U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly widened to a record in December
For all of 2002, the deficit reached $435.2 billion, the highest ever

U.S. Trade Deficit: Causes, Magnitude and Consequenses

Euron spricker när dollarn faller
Rolf Englund i EU-krönika i Nya Wermlands-Tidningen 2001-01-08

Skandias koncernchef Lars-Eric Petersson kan kvittera ut en fallskärm på hela 106 miljoner kronor om han får sparken,
länkar till Odd Eiken, Johan Gernandt och Per Unckel

How far can it fall? Is the party finally over? For years, currency experts have been confidently — and largely mistakenly — forecasting the decline of the dollar
The Economist Jan 10th 2003

State of The Union
Rolf Englund

Internet 20/1 2003

The boom that did not bust
By John Plender
Published: February 6 2003 21:02

 

As the late Herbert Stein, former chairman of the US council of economic advisers, once said: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." - (The Dollar)
Financial Times editorial 2/1 2003

Två tredjedelar av hela börsvärdet på Stockholmsbörsen försvann på två och ett halvt år
DI-ledare 30/12 2002

 

I väntan på nästa kris Peter Wolodarski
DN 21 november 2002

 

Därför tror vi på en uppgång
Affärsvärlden 20/12 2002

Den starka svenska kronan har lett till problem

Den svaga svenska kronan när var det?

”Sedan 1973 har Sverige haft alla möjligheter att hantera sin egen penningpolitik”
Ulf Jakobsson och Pehr Wissén
SvD Brännpunkt 12/12 2002

Om krisen 1992

"Nedskrivningarna av kronans värde bär en stor del av ansvaret för krisen 1990-1992"
Carl Johan Åberg DI, 12/12 2002

Om krisen 1992

"Kronans övervärdering i början av 1990-talet och normpolitikernas kollaps berodde på en oförmåga att ta itu med kostnadsutveckling, arbetsmarknad, sjukskrivningar, socialförsäkringssystemens utformning med mera"
Pontus Braunerhjelm
professor, VVD, SNS

Om krisen 1992

Undvik debatt med
Kamporganisationen Riksbanksdirektörer och valutahandlare mot EMU

Mats Johansson
SvDs ledarsida 2/12 2002

 

Till skillnad från folkomröstningen om EU-medlemskapet 1994 har nej-sidan nu en bred bas av nyanserade och ansedda företrädare med högst varierande politiska inriktningar. Det handlar om namnkunniga politiker, ekonomer, företagsledare och även tidigare riksbankschefer. Dessa kan knappast avfärdas som EU-fientliga eller okunniga.
Ledare Sydsvenskan 30/11 2002

 

Passa på att köpa Moder Sveas inflationssäkrade obligationer före årsskiftet.
Nästa år, när nya redovisningsregler träder i kraft, blir det rusning.
Gunnar Örn i DI 29/11 2002

U.S. Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS)

The Bank is losing a house price game
By Andrew Farlow, Financial Times, November 28 2002
The writer is the tutor in economics at Oriel College, Oxford University

It's happy hour again in the housing market.
Wait for the hangover
May 2nd 2002 From The Economist print edition

Personligen har jag svårt att se någon ekonomisk nettofördel med ett medlemskap:
jag tror snarare att det innebär en ekonomisk nackdel.

Lars Calmfors
SvD Brännpunkt 22/11 2002

 

Kronkrigarna från valutafronten firar Poltavaföreningen höll möte.
Carl A Hamilton
Aftonbladet 22/11 2002

Tomas Fischer: Med Bildt mot Poltava
Aftonbladet 91-12-22

1992 and all that

Citatsamling


Klas Eklund SvD 2002-11-12:
Det speciella med dagens lågkonjunktur är att den så uppenbart härrör från det sena 90-talets excesser. Överoptimism drev upp börskurserna för högt - varpå de kraschade. Samma överoptimism lockade fram för stora investeringar - som medförde överkapacitet. Företag och hushåll lånade för mycket - vilket tvingar dem att efter hand dra ner skulderna. Och alltför många konjunkturbedömare - inklusive er kolumnist - insåg alldeles för sent att en krasch var på väg.

Greenspan's fight
Low interest rates is not enough
By Martin Wolf

Financial Times, November 12 2002

Klas Eklund 2000-08-11:
"USA har ryckt åt sig ett stort försprång och har världens mest framgångsrika ekonomi"

BBC´s excellent net-journalism US Economy

An economy heading for a crash
House prices UK
By Martin Wolf, Financial Times

Sverige har under de senaste tjugo åren haft en klart sämre, kanske den sämsta ekonomiska tillväxten av något OECD-land. Gabriel Urwitz

Assar Lindbeck m fl:
Vi menade då /i Ekonomikommissionens rapport (SOU 1993:16)/, liksom nu, att de ekonomiska problemen inte endast, eller ens i första hand, härrör från ekonomisk-politiska missgrepp, som hade kunnat undvikas med skickligare politiker, experter och ämbetsmän. Problemens rötter sitter i institutioner och regelsystem i den svenska varianten av representativ demokrati och parlamentarism.

 

 

Don't Count Too Much on Central Banks
By John H. Makin

A stock market bubble exists when the value of stocks has more impact on the economy than the economy has on the value of stocks.
By John H. Makin

Washington, Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. consumer confidence in October plunged to a nine-year low as job cuts and expectations of declining incomes undermined faith in the economic recovery.

Klas Eklund:
USA har världens mest framgångsrika ekonomi.

Mariana Burenstam Linder: Både mamma och pappa har arbetat i banken
DI 2002-10-26

Den absoluta lejonparten av de totala kostnaderna för Riksbanken åsamkades under den sista veckan före kronans fall, när Riksbanken frångick sin tidigare strategi att försvara kronan genom räntehöjningar för att i stället övergå till direkta interventioner på valutamarknaden.

Rolf Englund talar i London hos Brugge-gruppen

Mrs. Thatcher

Rolf Englund på Timbro1980-1995
betyg av Sture Eskilsson

 

EMU bäddar för bråk
Stefan de Vylder

Det faktum att den nominella räntan är gemensam i en valutaunion innebär att realräntan blir lägst i de länder som har den högsta inflationen, det vill säga de som skulle behöva en hög ränta, och högst i de länder som skulle behöva stimulera ekonomin.
Göteborgs-Posten 2002-10-22
RE: En lysande artikel

 

US trade gap widens to record $38.5bn in August
Financial Times October 18 2002

Dow Jones vid 8.000

Moderatledare i ny omgivning
DN-ledare (ovanligt enfaldig)

Rolf Englund: Mot Poltava till varje pris!
Finanstidningen 98-12-23

Klas Eklund:
Bilden för USA håller på att justeras ned.

Allt fler höjer sannolikheten för en double dip.

Mats Johansson om "det stora språnget i väster"
Trots flera börschocker, av vilka vi sannolikt inte har sett den sista, förefaller den amerikanska modellen överlägsen den svenska och den europeiska; inte i alla avseenden, men många.

Bankerna smiter från sitt ansvar
Riksgäldskontorets chef Thomas Franzén

 

Behovet av ett nytt ekonomiskt tänkande / finansiella bubblor/Mattias LundbäckSvD Inblick 2002-10-04

Klas Eklund:
USA har världens mest framgångsrika ekonomi.

Bubble, bubble default trouble By John Plender
Financial Times, October 3 2002 20:15

Vilken bubbla spricker härnäst? Det amerikanska undret
Mats Johansson SvD ledarsida 1/9 2002

"Ingen törs tala om Bildts stora skuld"
Bengt Gustafson DN Debatt 2002-09-29

 

RE: Tove Lifvendahl
- en bokstavstroende nytaliban

Aftonbladet 2002-09-20:
Ett starkt EU är en nödvändighet i en världsordning som alltmer domineras av USA.
Ett Europa som agerar gemensamt kan sätta tryck både på Bagdad och Washington.

Det var orättvist att Per Unckel nu avgår efter kritik för att vara för gammal.
Rolf Englund på internet 2002-09-19

 

Don't ignore the current account
Financial Times editorial, September 19 2002

U.S. Trade Deficit: Causes, Magnitude and Consequenses

Mats Svegfors

SÅ FÖRLORADE HÖGERN SIN SJÄL

Fråga av Bengt-Ola Ryttar (s) till finansminister Bosse Ringholm om Riksbanken och EMU

1996/97:KU25 Granskning av statsrådens tjänsteutövning och regeringsärendenas handläggning 1
7. Regeringens eller enskilda statsråds hantering av kronförsvaret 1992

I en granskningsanmälan bilaga A 15.1 (av Bengt-Ola Ryttar) har begärts att konstitutionsutskottet undersöker om regeringen eller enskilda statsråd varit försumliga i sin hantering av kronförsvaret under hösten 1992.

Vid den tiden var jag reporter på Aktuellt och A-ekonomi och försökte så gott som varje dag få någon kritiker att ställa upp på en tv-intervju. Alla tackade nej, även om de kunde framföra kritiska åsikter när kameran var avstängd.
Till exempel blev jag en septemberdag för tio år sedan blev jag uppringd av en av svenskt näringslivs högsta företrädare. Han sa: - Det här kommer inte att gå. Storföretagen har redan bestämt sig - kronan kommer att falla.
Kan du säga detta i en bandad intervju? frågade jag. Svaret: - Aldrig, du begriper väl vad det skulle betyda för mig!? ... mer

Ulla Reinius i boken "Stålbadet"
Nils Lundgren blev "persona non grata" bland annat beroende på att han som anställd i Nordbanken, denna bank som ägdes av staten, förväntades ha sagt det han sade bakom stängda dörrar. Skriver man debattartiklar visar man prov på det som uppfattas som illojalitet. Då blir man utfryst. Nils Lundgren anser att det fortfarande, två år efter att händelsen inträffat, finns spår av en sådan utfrysning bland till exempel politiker och journalister. "Sverige är i grunden inte ett öppet samhälle," konstaterar Nils Lundgren.

Lessons learned on 'Black Wednesday', BBC

Meanwhile, in Sweden,
September 16, 1992

 
SvD om den debatt som vidtar inom moderaterna

Dennis försvarar försvaret
DN 13 september 2002 20:14

När Edin teg

Nu ångrar politikerna försvaret av kronan
DN ekonomi, 12 september 2002
21:49
"För tio år sedan var man betraktad som näst intill landsförrädare om man ifrågasatte försvaret av den svenska kronan. Avvikande röster från vänster och höger hyssjades ner."
Följ DN:s serie om den mest spektakulära händelsen i svensk ekonomisk historia.

Variations on a familiar theme (Stagflation)
By Samuel Brittan

NAIRU

Nu är det kris - Nu är det borgerlig regering
Rolf Englund på internet 2002-09-10

Lars Wohlin
i Ekonomisk Debatt nr 1/98

Was Alan Greenspan really powerless to stop the stockmarket bubble?
The Economist Sep 5th 2002

Det är de 28-åriga finansvalparna med blanka, skräddarsydda kostymer och vit Porsche som är börsgolvens nya matadorer.

"Svenska företag fällde kronan"
Dagens Nyheter, 7 september 2002, reporter Anders Olsson

Klas Eklund: Visst skulle Sverige klara sig utan EMU

Klas Eklund:
USA har världens mest framgångsrika ekonomi.

The perils of ignoring bubbles, By Stephen Cecchetti
He was director of research of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York between 1997 and 1999

Why Greenspan allowed irrational exuberance
Gerard Baker, Financial Times, March 07 2002

Vilken bubbla spricker härnäst?
Det amerikanska undret

Mats Johansson

Euron spricker när dollarn faller
Rolf Englund, NWT 2001-01-08

"Partiledarna starkare än på min tid"
Carl Bildt

Anne Wibble

Förre riksbankschefen Bengt Dennis tänker
rösta nej till EMU i den kommande folkomröstningen.

Dennis och kronkurs-försvaret

Öppet brev till partiledarna
Medborgare mot EMU Om grundlagen i valrörelsen

Regeringen erkänner att lagligheten i riksdagens ratificering av Nice-fördraget kan ifrågasättas Ur Prop. 2001/02:72

SvD: Den kraftigt ökande sjukfrånvaron och de
sjunkande investeringarna är två viktiga förklaringar till att Sverige år efter år halkar efter i OECD:s välståndsliga.

Kommentar RE:
Det är emellertid inte "år efter år"

Folkpartiet vill ha fd kommunist i regeringen
(Marit Paulsen)

”Jag har aldrig trott på Lenin”
Marit Paulsen i TCO-Tidningen nr 2/1990

Omprövningens tid!

Det är med stor osäkerhet jag försöker beskriva ett slags förvirring, rent av en smula hjälplöshet inför det som händer i Östeuropa.

Vart tog alla drömmar vägen? Vart är alla de ORD jag har använt? Var är de begrepp jag tänkt i?

Leif Pagrotsky avfärdar myten om att Sverige
halkar efter

Bo Lundgren om halkningen

America's date with deflation

Japan

There may be a knighthood for Greenspan in stage-managing a bubble, but

Terrible twins? Economic parallels between America and Japan

98-05-20: Gerhard Stenberg, chef för Handelsbankens kapitalförvaltning i Göteborg, hoppar av i protest mot börshysterin

Ericssons slutkurs innebar en ny bottennotering, 5:25.

Ericsson kommer att rasa ytterligare. Kanske så lågt som 50 kronor per aktie.

Klas Eklund: Man bör inte förringa svårigheterna och utmaningarna i USA. Lågkonjunkturen kommer att bli mer utdragen än vad optimisterna har trott.

Klas Eklund: USA har ryckt åt sig ett stort försprång och har världens mest framgångsrika ekonomi.

Fundamental truths,What Went Wrong? The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East
by Bernard Lewis,

"There is a certain melancholy pleasure in having been right when so many people were wrong."

Kronkursförsvaret 1992

Moderaterna backar kraftigt

Bo Lundgren

Hellre Srejber än Heikensten
Affärsvärlden 19/6 2002

Ur ÅKE ORTMARK: Ja-sägarna - Medlöpare och nickedockor kring Gyllenhammar, Karl XII, Kreuger och andra furstar

Nu var det 1988
En fastighets- och finanskris som nästan tycktes hota Kungariket Sveriges fortbestånd
DN huvudledare 9 augusti 2002

Dennis bryter riksbanksmystiken
Hans Bergström i hörnartikel i DN 98-10-19

John Makin: In December 1996 when Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan used the term irrational exuberance in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute's annual Boyer Award dinner, he was referring to the bursting of the Japanese equity bubble six years earlier.... full text

IMF $30bn (runt 300 miljarder kr) loan to Brazil - the largest ever in dollar terms - counters strict bail-out policy

Hur svenska statens utlandsskuld ökade med 311 miljarder

FT-Baker: Mr Greenspan (not Sir Alan, please) was recognised for his "outstanding contribution to global economic stability".

FT-Baker: Why Greenspan allowed irrational exuberance

Moderaterna vill ha två miljoner invandrare på 15 år Sverige behöver fri arbetskraftsinvandring.

Commission studies creation of EU border guards

 

Erik Åsbrink


Väljarna måste ta kommandot!
Årets val gäller bl.a. ett vilande grundlagsförslag med ändringar av 10.2 och 10.5 i regeringsformen (RF).
Inga löften om att kassera det vilande grundlagsförslaget, inga röster från oss väljare! Varför rösta, när det gör detsamma om våra lagar stiftas i Stockholm eller i Bryssel!
Margit Gennser i Barometern 2002-08-03 Full text


Mr Greenspan: "I recognise that there is a stock market bubble problem at this point," he said at the September 24, 1996 meeting - the day the Dow closed at 5874.03. Full text

Den Nya Eran


Leif Carlsson - om heder, sanning och rätt


Per Ahlmark Vi som var gripna av glädje 1993 när Rabin och Arafat tog varandra i hand utanför Vita huset - var vi idioter? Full text


Mats Johansson om "Det ekonomiska språnget i Väster" Full text

US trade deficit hits record high
The monthly US trade deficit hit a record $37.6bn in May

Klas Eklund: USA har ryckt åt sig ett stort försprång och har världens mest framgångsrika ekonomi. Full text

They say the mix of scandal, share price falls and huge loss of wealth will see the relationship between Main Street and Wall Street, which began with the railways and peaked with the internet, undergo a change not seen since the Wall Street crash of 1929. Full text

Mats Johansson: Det är aldrig bättre att ha haft fel än att ha haft rätt. (SvD 2000-08-17)

Realräntefonder attraktivt alternativ
Dagens Industri 2002-07-23 Full text

Marcus Wallenberg: "Man måste ha is i magen" Full text

Livet efter baksmällan
Den nya ekonomin var inte nyare än den gamla

DN-ledare 2002-07-26

Göran Persson ser köpläge 2001-09-25 Full text

Oron uppstår inte i ett tomrum
Det går upp och det går ner.
SvD-ledare 2002-07-26

Mats Johansson: Det är ingen större dramatik i det att börsen ibland korrigerar sig. Det gör marknader.2000-04-16 Full text

Testimony of Chairman Alan Greenspan
Federal Reserve Board's semiannual monetary policy report to the Congress Before the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, U.S. Senate July 16, 2002
Lawyers, internal and external auditors, corporate boards, Wall Street security analysts, rating agencies, and large institutional holders of stock all failed for one reason or another to detect and blow the whistle on those who breached the level of trust essential to well-functioning markets.

John Plender
Financial Times; Jul 15, 2002

So you think this bear market is rough? It is positively limp-wristed when compared with the depths of the mid-1970s.


Remarks by the President in Tribute to Milton Friedman
May 9, 2002

RE juli 2002: Från fondsocialism till fondkapitalism


WHAT is the European Union for? To promote peace? To project European power? To create a single European market? All of the above are popular answers in Brussels. But look at what the EU actually spends its money on, and you may be forced to conclude that its real purpose is to subsidise agriculture.
The Economist, July 11th 2002

Sveriges problem är inte konjunkturella - då hade vi inte halkat efter andra länder.
Våra problem är strukturella och kräver grundläggande reformer av ekonomins sätt att fungera.
Bo Lundgren, m, Alf Svensson, kd, Maud Olofsson, c och Lars Leijonborg, fp på DN Debatt 2002-07-12

"What has Happened to Monetarism?
An Investigation into the Keynesian Roots of Milton Friedman's Monetary Thought and Its Apparent Monetarist Legacies"
Jörg Bibow, The Levy Economics Institute, June 2002

Watching out for the great bear
Jul 4th 2002 From The Economist

"Kavaljerer mot pundhuvuden"
Kommentar av Rolf Englund på internet 2002-07-04

till min gamle vän Mats Johanssons krönika om Kronans kavaljerer i anledning av Lars Wohlin m fl från Medborgare mot EMU.

Näringslivsprofiler och tidigare riksbankschef varnar för EMU:
"Medlemskap är slutet för Riksbanken"
DN Debatt 2002-07-02

Ett medlemskap i EMU är utomordentligt farligt för svensk ekonomi. Sverige skulle förlora möjligheten att bedriva en självständig ekonomisk politik. Vi skulle avskaffa vår självständiga riksbank som fört en framgångsrik penningpolitik och begränsat inflationen. Vidare får vi permanent högre skatter och sämre välfärd. Det skriver bland andra tidigare riksbankchefen Lars Wohlin samt näringslivets Rune Andersson och Per-Olof Eriksson, som bildat en alternativ motståndsgruppp mot EMU.


Det stora bankrånet
Dagens Arbete Dokument september 2001

För tio år sedan utbröt bankkrisen. Hela samhället höll på att dras med i djupet. Men nu har bankerna växt sig feta. Notan fick bankkunderna betala med dyrare och sämre service.

The eagle (the dollar) is landing
Financial Times, editorial, June 24 2002

Handelssiffror sänker dollarn
DI, 2002-06-20

Den starka dollarns stora svaghet
Joseph Stiglitz
DN 17 juni 2002

Terrible twins?
Economic parallels between America and Japan
America's economy looks awfully like Japan's after its bubble burst
Jun 13th 2002 From The Economist print edition

The recovery myths
The world economy is coping with the aftermath of two huge asset-price bubbles: the Japanese of the 1980s; and the US-led worldwide bubble of the second half of the 1990s.
Adjustment to the end of the first is not yet over. Adjustment to the end of the second has, contrary to conventional wisdom, hardly begun.
By Martin Wolf, Financial Times June 11 2002


Margit Gennser (m) blir knappast landshövding, även om hon gör sin sista mandatperiod.
Gennser deklarerade sturskt att omsorgen om rättssäkerheten krävde att hon röstade nej, även om partipiskan påbjöd att hon inte tog ställning i valet mellan EU och rättsstaten.
Gennser är klartänkt och självständig. Hon oroar sig inte för att bli mobbad på EU:s middagsbjudningar. Hon är inte i början av en broilerkarriär med vittring på makten. Hon är, kort sagt, Morgan Johanssons raka motsats.
Och hon talar i fullständiga meningar.
Johan Hakelius i SvD 2002-05-31


RE: Bunkern sitter kvar
Riksbanksfullmäktiges ordförande Sven Hulterström (s) och
vice ordförande Johan Gernandt (m) säger i ett gemensamt uttalande att:
"Valet av Heikensten och Srejber är ett uttryck för förtroende för den förda penningpolitiken och att fullmäktige vill säkerställa kontinuitet i Riksbankens arbete. Det innebär också att Riksbanken är väl förberedd för ett inträde i EMU om riksdagen fattar ett sådant beslut." (DI 2002-06-14)


Spam stoppers: CNET reviews your Delete-button alternatives

The recovery myths
The world economy is coping with the aftermath of two huge asset-price bubbles: the Japanese of the 1980s; and the US-led worldwide bubble of the second half of the 1990s.
Adjustment to the end of the first is not yet over. Adjustment to the end of the second has, contrary to conventional wisdom, hardly begun.
By Martin Wolf, Financial Times June 11 2002


Inflation can be too low
By Samuel Brittan

Financial Times, June 5 2002 20:42
Bo Lundgren är av annan mening

Allt fler kontorsfastigheter står tomma
RE: igen, frestas man tillägga
DI 2002-06-04

RE: Här har man nytta av att ha sparat info under drygt tiotalet år.
Om Du klickar på länken ovan kommer Du back to the past.
Mörtstedt har bekymmer igen... Undrar vem som lånar honom pengar...


Ur Carl Bildts veckobrev v23/2002
Att det nu finns tendenser till en försvagning av den starka dollarna, och ty följande relativ förstärkning av euron, gör inte nödvändigtvis den utvecklingen lättare att hantera. En starkare euro gör det visserligen möjligt att hålla räntorna lägre längre än vad som annars skulle ha blivit fallet, men innebär samtidigt att amerikansk export blir mer konkurrenskraftig och europeisk mindre å.
Med en tillväxt- och sysselsättningsutveckling som inte är idealisk är det ett scenario inte utan problem.

A dollar short
By Peronet Despeignes and Christopher Swann
"The risk is that the virtuous circle of feedback between the economy, equity markets and the dollar that brought good things to the US in the late 1990s could turn into a vicious circle of feedback in the period ahead."
FT, May 30 2002 21:10

Låg inflation och låg arbetslöshet möjlig
Bo Lundgren i Veckobrev 30 maj 2002

KU-kritik mot särskilt Baltikumbistånd - Östersjömiljarderna
Jan Mosander
Ekot torsdag 30 maj 2002

Intervju med Milton Friedman om EU/EMU
publicerad i Nyliberalen nr 1, 2002

Otillständigt om grundlagsändringen
Två dagar mellan bordläggning och beslut
Rolf Englund på Internet
2002-05-29

Mona Sahlin, en bild som jag tror är satirisk

Bush's message in Berlin.
Peggy Noonan: Wake Up, Europe!

Fasten your seatbelts (Dollar slide)
May 23rd 2002 From The Economist

Capitalism and its troubles
SURVEY: INTERNATIONAL FINANCE
May 16th 2002 From The Economist print edition

Är den keynesianska ekonomin död?
Asienkrisen, Ryssland, IMF och Argentina

Joseph Stiglitz
DN, 12 maj 2002

Urban Bäckström

Lars Heikensten


Rolf Englund 2002-05-15

Den nu föreslagna grundlagsändringen, innebärande att beslutanderätt skall kunna överföras inte bara till EG utan även till EU måste beslutas genom den ordning som gäller för stiftande av grundlag. (RE: dvs med mellanliggande val).

Men om Riksdagen godkänner den nu akktuella grundlagsändring kommer det att i framtiden att bli möjligt att överföra beslutanderätt till EU utan mellanliggande val. Eliten behöver inte fråga folket.

Det är det saken gäller.


Regeringen erkänner att lagligheten i riksdagens ratificering av Nice-fördraget kan ifrågasättas.


Bust ahead
It's happy hour again in the housing market. Wait for the hangover
May 2nd 2002 From The Economist print edition
"New" idea from Rolf Englund: If You try to steer the economy by interest rates, You should not be surprised to find that the interest-rate-sensitive parts of the economy goes up and down more than the other parts of the economy, stupid.

Pressure on dollar forces - O'Neill to speak in riddles
By Christopher Swann, FT, May 2 2002 20:14

ECB-chefen varnar för USA-underskott
DN 2002-05-02

Hurra, vilket härligt börsras!
Thomas Franzén intervjuad i FinansVison 2002-05-02

Riksgäldskontoret som sedan många år försökt öka svenskarnas intresse för räntepapper har fått vatten på sin kvarn. ”Även hos de stora placerarna märker vi ett nytt intresse. Vi hade en nyemission av en realobligation för några veckor sedan som övertecknades sju gånger av institutionella aktörer, det skulle inte ha hänt för ett år sedan då intresset var betydligt svalare”, säger Thomas Franzén.


Fred Bergsten, head of the well-respected Institute for International Economics,
said that he believed the dollar was worth 20-25% too much.

BBC, 2 May, 2002

Dollar slides after O'Neill testimony
BBC, 2 May, 2002

Ur Regeringsformen 8:15
Folkomröstning om vilande grundlagsförslag skall anordnas, om yrkande därom framställes av minst en tiondel
av riksdagens ledamöter och minst en tredjedel av ledamöterna röstar för bifall till yrkandet. Sådant yrkande skall framställas inom femton dagar från det att riksdagen antog grundlagsförslaget som vilande. Folkomröstningen skall hållas samtidigt med det val till riksdagen som avses i första stycket. .....mer


I dont care about the current-account deficit, Mr. O´Neill
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 2002-04-21

IMF once again warned
Wall Street Journal 2002-04-19

The IMF once again warned that problems in the U.S. -- the massive current-account deficit, the low personal-savings rate, and overvaluation of the dollar -- could lead to violent world financial-market shifts.


Dollar slides lower across the board
Financial Times April 18 2002 09:55

Carl Bildt både stolt och nöjd
Ledare i SvD med rubriken Smörgåsbord väntar för en ny regering
2002-04-19
Med upprörd kommentar av Rolf.

Johan Gernandt på Skandias bolagsstämma
FinansVision 2002-04-18

Tomas Nicolin upprepade på stämman sin kritik mot optionsprogrammet; det kostar för mycket 400 Mkr eller 20 procent av vinsten och har för dålig koppling till prestationen. Men när han skulle tala tystades han av stämmans ordförande Johan Gernandt: ”Jag ber dig att inte ta upp detta. Styrelsen har signalerat att frågan ska komma tillbaka”, sa han upprepade gånger.


Enron-page updated 020409


Let free marketeers of all countries unite
Amity Shlaes, FT, Apr 01 2002 17:43:04 GMT

Is terror the flip side of globalisation? Is Latin America heading for trouble because liberal economics failed there? Does September 11 prove the sunny economic focus of the 1990s naive?

No, no and no, free marketeers would argue. But even they concede that making the case for the all-healing powers of commerce has become harder lately.

Beleaguered free marketeers may find useful ammunition in a new television documentary. On Wednesday evening in the US, PBS will air the first segment of a mini-series that lays out the free market world view on a scale not seen since Milton Friedman hosted Free to Choose 22 years ago. UK networks will show the series soon.

The Commanding Heights* is largely historical, tracing the battle between free marketeers and central planners from the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture to the fires of September 11. (The title comes from that great wordsmith, Vladimir Lenin.)

The Commanding Heights (PBS), produced by William Cran,

based on the book of the same title by Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw (Touchstone)


Per Ahlmark
DN 2001-12-10

Vi som var gripna av glädje 1993 när Rabin och Arafat tog varandra i hand utanför Vita huset - var vi idioter?

Äntligen såg vi ett slut på konfrontationerna; såg vi i syne? Vi som pratat oss varma för en palestinsk stat bredvid Israel - var vi, kort sagt, förförda av en illusion?

Full text

Rolf Englund på DN:s ledarsida 1976-08-06 om folkpartiets, Ahlmarks och Ullstens löntagarfonder


U. S. Trade Deficit, new version

En sån himla otur
Oturligt nog drabbades de /Bildt-regeringen/ av den värsta ekonomiska nedgången på sextio år.
Hösten 1992 var det slut på den enda vägens politik
DN-ledare 2002-03-26

En dumhetens konspiration
Expressen, Dagens Industri, Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet och Bo Lundgren
Rolf Englund i Nya Wermlands-Tidningen 2002-03-22

Riksgäldskontorets ledning och förre börschefen varnar:
"Banker vilseleder aktiespararna"

DN Debatt 2002-03-19

Lars Jonung:
Sverige bytte stabiliseringspolitisk regim i slutet av 1980-talet utan att det fanns förståelse för processens konsekvenser för den makroekonomiska utvecklingen.

Nils Lundgrens särskilda yttrande

Expertpanel ska komplettera erfarenheterna av bankkrisen
Riksdagen pressmeddelande

Finansutskottet vill att regeringen tillsätter en expertpanel i samband med utformningen av en framtida lagstiftning på det finansiella området. Finansutskottet skriver i sitt betänkande, som ska debatteras på onsdag, att det i panelen gärna får ingå utländska experter. Panelen ska utgöra ett komplement till den genomgång som syftar till att ta reda på att alla viktiga erfarenheter från bank- och finanskrisen uppmärksammats vid arbetet med att ta fram ny lagstiftning.

Planerad dag för debatt: Onsdagen den 13 mars 2002


Anne Wibbles minnesfond

"Ett system oförenligt med ekonomisk frihet"
Sven Rydenfelt på SvD Brännpunkt 1992-04-27

Bo Lundgren talar sanning i
Svenska Dagbladet/Näringsliv, s. 12, 2002-03-02

Wallenbergssfären, Percy och EMU
Rolf Englund i Nya Wermlands-Tidningen
2002-03-01

An unsustainable black hole
(The US current account deficit)
Martin Wolf
Financial Times, February 27 2002
RE: A difficult, but a state of the art article - highly recommended

Bo Lundgren i Veckobrev 22 februari 2002:
På söndag åker jag till Tokyo för att diskutera den japanska och asiatiska ekonomin med regeringsföreträdare, akademiker och representanter för näringslivet.

Truth always lies at the bottom of the page
Footnotes can be honest, scurrilous and filthy and they must be saved
The Times, FEBRUARY 09 2002

The footnote is the great unsung footsoldier of scholarship: it is the place where the hand-to-hand combat occurs, the battleground at the bottom of the page devoted to the doubting aside, the backstabbing, the settling of debts and scores, self-exculpation and the tangents too obscure, funny, dirty or contentious for inclusion in the main text, but too interesting to abandon altogether.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,248-2002066167,00.html


Spela roulett med skuldbördan
Leif Widén

(Världsekonomin och aktiebörserna)
Arbetspapper 2002-02-04

Olagligt godkännande av Nice-fördraget
Rolf Englund i Finanstidningen 2002-02-05

Shares and the world economy (Doom on Wall Street) updated and loads faster

A conservative tide is sweeping Europe
ANATOLE KALETSKY
The Times, JANUARY 17 2002


The 1990s’ Boom Went Bust. What’s Next?
Milton Friedman
Wall Street Journal 2002-01-22

USA i kraschläge
DI:s Cecilia Skingsley 2002-01-21

Enron

Doom on Wall Steet updated


Hands Lind i överklagande av beslut om avslag gällande
ansökan om befordran till professor, KTH 2001-12-07

- Jag kan förstå professor Perssons intresse för artikeln med tanke på den kritik som artikeln innehåller. Samtidigt är det rimligen inte en sakkunnigs uppgift att ge sig in i en ingående diskussion om huruvida argumenten i en specifik artikel är riktiga eller inte - och knappast heller att, som det verkar, grunda bedömningen av artikelns meritvärde på om man anser att argumenten håller eller ej.


Skyll Japankrisen på Keynes
Mattias Lundbäck SvD ledarsida 2002-01-11

Mona Sahlin

Uppdatering av Bank- och Finanskrisen 1992

Riksdagens Revisorer:
2001/02:5 Östersjömiljarderna – insyn och kontroll

Slutsatser: Granskningen har inriktats på hur den ekonomiska redovisningen och kontrollen är upplagd och sköts i stort och för enskilda projekt. Östersjömiljarderna disponeras av regeringen.
Granskningen av Östersjömiljardernas ekonomiska redovisning har utgått från att i princip samma krav på redovisningen och på möjligheterna till insyn och kontroll bör gälla, som om verksamheten fullt ut legat på myndigheter under regeringen. Granskningen har bl.a. visat att förfarandet med ansökningar innebär att någon upphandling ofta inte blivit aktuell. Flera av de förhållanden rörande den ekonomiska redovisningen av Östersjömiljarderna som iakttagits under granskningsarbetet hänger samman med vissa generella problem beträffande insynen i och kontrollen av anslag till regeringens disposition.
Revisorerna anser att · Arbetet med utveckling av rutiner och riktlinjer för Östersjömiljarderna bör fortsätta. · Den fortlöpande ekonomiska kontrollen måste förbättras. · Östersjömiljarderna bör fortlöpande och sammanhängande redovisas på ett sätt som är likvärdigt den ordning som gäller för verksamheter genom myndigheter under regeringen.
Fortsatt granskning: Rapporten har sänts på remiss. Förslag till riksdagen beräknas lämnas i början av år 2002.

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Did Greenspan Push His Optimism About the New Economy Too Far?
Wall Street Journal December 28, 2001

A grim joke is doing the rounds in financial circles.
What is the difference between Argentina and Japan?
Five years.
Financial Times editorial, December 30 2001 18:39

Bo Lundgren om Sverige som skatteparadis (den s.k. eftersläpningen)

Why the world loves to hate America
Moisés Naím
The writer is editor of Foreign Policy magazine
Financial Times, December 6 2001 19:17

Vad professorn /Calmfors/ borde säga i EMU-debatten
Carl A Hamilton i Aftonbladet 2001-12-06

Why Europe Hates Israel
By Bret Stephens, an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.
Wall Street Journal 2001-1-29

The US economy, which officials have admitted has entered recession, will perform even worse next year than in 2001.
America's economy, the world's biggest, will grow by 0.75% next year, OECD said.

Vad är nytt i den nya ekonomin
Nils-Eric Sandberg, VI-Direkt nr 7, november 2001

A Boost That Goes Nowhere
Nobel economist JOSEPH STIGLITZ sees dark days ahead, and says the wrong stimulus package will cause even greater gloom
Washington Post, November 11, 2001

The United Statesis in the midst of a recession that may well turn out to be the worst in 20 years, and the Republican-backed stimulus package will do little to improve the economy -- indeed it may make matters worse. In the short term, unemployment will continue to rise and output will fall. But the U.S. economy will eventually bounce back -- perhaps in a year or two. More worrying is the threat a prolonged U.S. recession poses to the rest of the world.

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Fattigdom garant mot terrorism
Peter Stein - Tidskriften Menorah - nr 4/2001

Debatterna efter terroristattacken mot USA den 11 september har visat hur svårt många har att hantera händelsen. Gamla reflexer hjälper inte. Man kan inte vifta bort attacken som ett vansinnesdåd utfört av fega barbarer. Barbarer klarar inte en sådan operation. Dom som utförde dådet visade prov på stort (ehuru perverterat) mod.

Till att börja med röjer uppfattningen ett översittarperspektiv. Fattiga ”där nere” skulle, av obevisad anledning, ha större benägenhet att lockas av terrorism. Majoriteten av världens fattiga, vare sig de bor i Gaza eller någon annan stans, är inga terrorister. Det är individer som med säkerhet är kapabla att skilja ont från gott. Jag tror inte ett ögonblick att flertalet fattiga stöder sådana aktioner eller tror att terror förbättrar deras livsvillkor. Dessutom är det så att det som utmärker fattigdom är att fattiga dagligen tvingas kämpa för livhanken. Då har man inte tid för terrorism.


Divided we stand, united we fall
The market requires individuals to act in their own self-interest.
But their decisions can add up to recession
Michael Prowse, Financial Times; Nov 10, 2001

America and the War
By Tony Judt
The New York Review of Books November 15, 2001

Världskonjunkturen var redan före den 11 september på väg ner
mot de bottennivåer som noterades under krisåren 1990-91
Mats Johansson i SvD 2001-11-04

Tala om tillväxt (förklaring till 1992)
DN-ledare 2001-11-05

Mediocre, not miraculous /US economy/
Financial Times editorial, 2001-11-01

med citat av EMU-anhängarna Bo Lundgren, Mats Johansson och Klas Eklund

Om kriget mot talibanerna


Om Bush's stimulanspaket


Ny grundlag
Rolf Englund EU-krönika
i Nordvästra Skånes Tidningar 2001-10-22

A poor defence for share prices
Martin Wolf Financtial Times, Oct 23 2001

Nya ekonomin och bakmaskinen
Chefredaktören
Veckans Affärer nr 43/2001

Bo Lundgren i Torsdagsbrev nr 21/2001, 11 oktober 2001
Vad gäller ekonomin lade Reagans marknadsliberala politik grunden för en uppgångsfas utan motsvarighet i amerikansk historia.


Dolkstötslegenden
Rolf Englund i EU-krönika i Nordvästra Skånes Tidningar
2001-10-11


Nguyen Van Thieu, South Vietnam's war leader, died on September 22nd, aged 76
The Economist, den 4 Oktober 2001

On April 25th Mr Thieu was flown out in an American aircraft. His departure is described in “Without Honor: Defeat in Vietnam and Cambodia”, by Arnold Isaacs.

After dark, a small convoy of cars with diplomatic licences drove past the military police checkpoint on to Tansonnhut air base. At the wheel of one of the cars, a large Chevrolet, was the CIA's Frank Snepp. In the back seat, awkwardly chatting about events and encounters far in the past, were the CIA's station military expert Charles Timmes and Nguyen Van Thieu. As they passed the checkpoint, Thieu ducked his head...Next to a C-118 transport Ambassador Martin waited to make his farewells. The South Vietnamese leader, sleekly dressed as usual but speaking hoarsely and with tears glistening on his face, thanked Snepp briefly, then trotted up the steps into the aircraft. Martin's last talk with Thieu had been nothing historic, he told Snepp later, “just goodbye”.

Mr Thieu never returned to Vietnam. He lived for several years in Wimbledon, a suburb of London, and later moved to the United States to a house near Boston. He gave few interviews to journalists. He seemed reluctant to dwell on the humiliations of the past. In one of his last speeches to South Vietnam's parliament he had bitterly accused the Americans of “running away”, a cruel comment on a country that had lost nearly 60,000 of its people in the war. But now that Mr Thieu was a guest of the West, Confucian politeness prevailed. History is the loser for Mr Thieu's reticence. Among the vast and extraordinary cast of actors who made their entrances and exits in Vietnam during its 30 years of war he was remarkable in being on stage in some role throughout.

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För att förstå det stämningsläge som rådde måste vi, som är gamla nog att ha upplevt det i politiskt mogen ålder, erinra oss hur det var.
De yngre får försöka förstå det ändå. Låt oss i detta syfte återgå i tankarna till år 1972
och för vår inre syn vara med om den socialdemokratiska partikongressen.


Europe's Economies Find Convergence, Easing the Formation of Monetary Policy
Wall Street Journal, October 5, 2001

The economies of the euro zone are finally starting to move in step, though unfortunately they're all heading in the wrong direction.

The convergence makes it much easier for the ECB to operate a one-size-fits-all monetary policy.


It’s time to come back down to earth
By Philip Coggan, Financial Times, October 5 2001

A share is just that - a share in the assets and profits of a company. Its value depends on the current and future level of those assets and profits.

But for a while in the late 1990s, investors seemed to ignore those fundamentals. They bought shares because they were going up and let the next investor worry about things like assets or profits.

Negativ realränta
Dagens Industri 2001-10-04

Liksom alla andra underskattade vi för tio år sedan djupet i den
ekonomiska kris vi då höll på att störta ner i.

Carl Bildt och Bengt Westerberg på DN Debatt 2001-10-03

Överskattade underskattade
Ledare i Finanstidningen 2001-10-04
”Vi underskattade krisen” löd rubriken över Carl Bildts och Bengt Westerbergs artikel på Dagens Nyheters debattsida i går, tio år efter att de tog över makten. Och sju år efter att de blev av med den.


Mörk framtid för svenska hushåll
SvD-ledare 2001-10-03

- Det är ingen större dramatik i det att börsen ibland korrigerar sig. Det gör marknader.
Mats Johansson, SvD 2000-04-16

Lester C. Thurow Market Crash Born of Greed April 17, 2001

Keynes är stendöd SvD-ledare 2001-03-22

Huvudproblemet är regeringens ovilja att genomföra strukturella reformer
SvD-ledare 2001-08-30

Mats Johansson: "Aldrig bättre att ha haft fel"
Det är aldrig bättre att ha haft fel än att ha haft rätt. (SvD 2000-08-17)

-USA har ryckt åt sig ett stort försprång och har världens mest framgångsrika ekonomi
Klas Eklund på SvD:s ledarsida 2000-08-11

Barn och växelkurspolitik
Stefan de Vylder


"Varför gör prognosmakarna så stora kollektiva misstag? (Göran Albinsson Bruhner) och
"Betalda optimister fick alibi för svartsyn" (Ledare i Dagens Industri ) klicka här

Dow Jones närmar sig 8.000

"Botten är nådd"
Björn Davegårdh och Peter Malmqvist

Göran Persson ser köpläge
Dagens Industri 2001-09-25


Augusti kommer före september
Rolf Englund i mail 2001-09-20

If America and the world now suffer a recession it seems sure to be blamed on the terrorists. Economists may even use this to explain why their earlier forecasts were wrong.
Yet the truth is that the world was probably heading for recession anyway.
The Economist, 2001-09-13

Diagram Dow Jones 1991-2001


Carl Bildt, statsminister
Vad hände egentligen hösten 1992 när räntan var 500 procent och kronan föll som en sten? En som vet borde vara Carl Bildt som ledde den borgerliga fyrpartiregeringen åren 1991-1994. Ekots inrikespolitiske kommentator Thomas Hempel har gjort två program om den här tiden. Carl Bildt intervjuas förstås. Valrörelserna 1991 och 1994 diskuteras liksom centerledaren Olof Johansons avgång ur regeringen i samband med beslutet om Öresundsbron.

Monstruöst, sade Economist (om stabilitetspakten)
Rolf Englund
i EU-krönika i Nya Wermlands-Tidningen 2001-08-30

"Snart bildas nytt konservativt parti"
Torbjörn Tännsjö om moderaternas farväl till de ideologiska rötterna

DN Debatt 2001-08-31

IMF warns of a significant danger of global recession
Financial Times
, August 30 2001 19:43GMT

Blame Greenspan
James Grant
, Forbes Magazine, 2001-09-03
The chairman’s ill-timed optimism seduced investors and helped inflate the bubble.

Handlingskraft: Nej tack
DN-ledare 20010-82-9

Kommer Göran Persson och Bosse Ringholm att kunna hålla emot när vänsterpartiet och delar av socialdemokratin ropar på gammaldags stimulanspaket?
När till och med högerekonomer förespråkar keynesianism kan det vara svårt.

Huvudproblemet är regeringens ovilja att genomföra strukturella reformer
SvD-ledare 2001-08-30

Euro a ‘great mistake’
Milton Friedman i Corriera della Sera
Monday 27th August 2001


Kolumn/Konjunkturnedgång - Gamla hjältar till heders igen
Klas Eklund på SvD ledarsida 2001-08-24
Inneordet just nu är konjunkturnedgång. Prognoser skrivs ned och varsel läggs i bjärt kontrast till den ljusa bild som de flesta ekonomer - däribland er krönikör - beskrev för bara ett år sedan. Då spådde vi att den väntade nedgången skulle bli mild och att räntesänkningar ganska snabbt skulle kunna få kurvorna att vända upp igen.
Varför fick vi fel?

"Persson förlängde arbetslösheten"
Per Lundborg på DN Debatt 2001-08-17
Per Lundborg är professor vid Fackföreningsrörelsens institut för ekonomisk forskning och Handelshögskolan i Göteborg

Konformismen om kronkursförsvaret
Replik på Per Lundborg
Rolf Englund 2001-08-19 Refuserat av DN Debatt


Om den fallande dollarn

Keynes lives
By Robert Skidelsky
Financial Times, August 15 2001 19:06GMT
Lord Skidelsky is professor of political economy at Warwick university.
The third volume of his biography of John Maynard Keynes was published in November

Bankers sound hard-landing alert for US economy
Financial Times; Jun 12, 2001 By ALAN BEATTIE

The US economy is at riskof a hard landing unless growth picks up elsewhere in the world, the Bank for International Settlements said yesterday.

Riksdagsman Bildt lämnar bänken
SVD-ledare 2001-06-14

Allan Larsson

Dow
The Economist 20001-05-24

U.S. Trade Deficit: Causes, Magnitude and Consequenses
"Shop until the exchange rates of the dollar drop"

Carl Bildt om EMU och kronförsvaret
Rolf Englund i EU-krönika i NWT 2001-05-18

Den fasta växelkursen och försvaret av den hösten 1992, med efterföljande nedskärningar mitt under den djupaste lågkonjunkturen sedan 1930-talet, var något som orsakades av viljan att komma med i EMU. Det har vi Carl Bildts ord på och han bör ju veta som var statsminister då.

Bildt intervjuades nyligen i TV 8 av Åke Ortmark, som frågade om Carl Bildts syn på sin egen insats hade förändrats, t ex om kronförsvaret. Nej, svarade Carl Bildt.

Är kronförsvaret något som Du fortfarande med stolthet kan stå för, frågade Åke Ortmark.

- Jag tror det hade varit fundamentalt fel om Sverige inte hade försökt stå emot. Om vi hade sagt att vi devalverar igen. Det vi hade att kämpa mot var bilden av Sverige som landet som inte vågar, inte vill, inte kan, utan devalverar så fort det är svåra tider - och vi stod fast rätt länge.


- Man måste vara vaksam så att inte en enpartistat förvandlas till något som inte är demokrati.
Bengt Säve-Söderberg, statssekr.åt biståndsminister Lena Hjelm-Wallén, i Jönköping den 22 mars 1990. Han sitter nu med 100.000 kr i lön i ett organ för demokratins främjande i världen, ett organ som fått kritik, enligt Jan Mossander i Dagens Eko.
http://www.internetional.seenprtist.html

Den 17 maj arrangerade Samtidshistoriska institutet på Södertörns högskola ett vittnesseminarium om fondsocialismen, 70-talets stora systemfråga. .... mer

An interest in inflation (Real Interest Rates)
Financial Times, Editorial comment, May 11, 2001

BNP per capita i Sverige och andra OECD-länder år 2000 beräknade enligt köpkraftspariteter, PPP

Vad är sanning?
Rolf Englund i EU-krönika
i Nya Wermlands-Tidningen 2001-04-23
När de erkänner sanningen, då kan politiken bli bättre, skrev Dagens Industri i en ledare (11/4) i anledning av rapporten från finansdepartementet om orsakerna till 90-talskrisen.

Utfryst ur växthuset
Axel Odelberg i Finanstidningen
, signerat, 2001-04-21
Det mänskliga operativsystemet är programmerat med en uppsättning svåremotståndliga drifter som att äta, sova och sätta på. Det finns också ett antal mer andligt betingade överlevnadsreflexer.
En av de starkaste är strävan att vara överens. /t ex kronförsvaret/

SvD-ledare: Oppositionens påminnelser om de strukturella problemen kan tyckas tjatiga. Men de berör kärnfrågan.

Utdrag ur "Finans- och penningpolitiskt bokslut för 90-talet" (htm)

Bilaga 5: Finans- och penningpolitiskt bokslut för 90-talet

Warning: A Splurging America Is Borrowing Trouble
Franco Modigliani and Robert M. Solow

The International Herald Tribune, April 10, 200
The writers are Nobel Prize winners in economics. They contributed this comment to The New York Times.

Harry Schein i DN 01-03-05: Svårast att byta åsikt har yrkestyckare.

Det grundläggande misstaget
Date: Mon, 09 Apr 2001 19:45

Det grundläggande misstaget, man vill helst inte tänka sig andra ord, i bunkergängets i vid mening analys, om man kan använda det ordet, framgår av i all sin tydlighet av ett diagram jag snubblade över när jag letade efter något annat.

Emile Durkheim, the great French sociologist, by MICHAEL PROWSE, Financial Times

Englund och Anna Lindh i TV8 om Bildt och Albanien

Carl Bildts Lundin Oil i Albanien

Hans Bergström

U.S. Current Account Deficit Widened To Record $115.27 Billion

Om SvD och Moses
Rolf Englund på internet 2001-03-14

Waking up to equity risk
Can the global equity culture survive its first bear market?
Mar 8th 2001 The Economist


Meningsutbyte mellan Rolf Englund och Nils-Eric Sandberg

Uppdatering: Vad hände med Sveriges ekonomi efter 1970? (SOU 1999:150) en delrapport till Demokratiutredningen av Torsten Sverenius.

Ghosts of Booms Past By Robert J. Samuelson Washington Post, February 8, 2001

Det går bra Thomas Gür i Finanstidningen 2001-01-30
Ett mellanspel som politisk kampanjmakare i EU-svängen följde på politrukuppdraget. Stadda vid god kassa, i en ohelig allians över blockgränserna och professionellt realistiskt/cyniska i handlaget, förmådde vi övertala en knapp majoritet av väljarna att i några veckor i mitten av november 1994 vara för ett svenskt medlemskap.
I den mån vi inte larvade oss med paroller som att det är roligare att säga ja, var ett kardinalargument att man skulle rösta ja för jobbens skull.


Den svenska skuldkrisen
Rolf Englund på Dagens Debatt 2001-02-01
om Svegfors, Dagens Nyheter och Bank-och finanskrisen 1992 ff

Klas Eklund om USA-ekonomin, version 3


Men det regnar ju i Frankfurt /Om Irland och den gemensamma räntan/
Gunnar Örn i Dagens Industri 2001-01-29


U.S. Marine Corps Ribbons In Correct Order of Wear
click here and here.


Lärdomar av Asienkrisen Om DN huvudledare 01-01-22


Dålig fart på svenska tillväxten (PPP)


På tisdagsmorgonen värderades Nokia till 1.880 miljarder kronor.


The Economist: Don’t say “new economy”
2001-01-04

Wall Street fears that America’s economic slowdown may turn vicious. So, apparently, does Alan Greenspan, who cut interest rates unexpectedly this week.

Is it all over for the new economy?


America's Hard