Yanis Varoufakis on Ringfencing Europe
Yanis Varoufakis gave an energetic, pointed, and insightful talk at the INET conference in Berlin. His message was that the efforts by European authorities were misguided, in that they were seeking to ringfence individual countries, when it was the Eurozone as a whole that needs to be shored up. And he contends this can be...
Kiwi inflows bearing fruit
Large currency moves are generally easy enough to apply a reifyingly simplistic narrative to figure out.Japanese yen having a bad year? That’s the Bank of Japan’s fault....
Philip Pilkington: MMT, Functional Finance and Dirigisme – Sketch of an Alternative Economic Approach for Developing Economies
By Philip Pilkington, a writer and journalist based in Dublin, Ireland. You can follow him on Twitter at @pilkingtonphil
I expect to see the State, which is in a position to calculate the marginal efficiency of capital-goods on long views and on the basis of the general social advantage, taking an ever greater responsibility for directly...
Book Review: Currency Wars
I sometimes call it “the race to the bottom.” During a time where most nations are feeling economically weak, some decide to weaken their currency, so that their exporters can do better, which supposedly preserves jobs in export industries. Producers have concentrated interests, and lobby well. The interests of consumers are diffuse, and don’t...
Sorted Weekly Tweets
Valuations High Yield Closed End Funds 68% over NAV, 3% avg premium. Loan Participation CEFs 40% over NAV, -1% avg discount. Conditions r medium hot $$ Apr 07, 2012 Why Stocks Look Too Pricey http://t.co/TWqZzGg3 Various Indicators Suggest the Market Is No Longer a Bargain, at best fairly valued $$ Apr 07, 2012 Contra:...
Gold does Nothing
Gold does nothing, and as Warren Buffett said in his recent annual report: Today the world’s gold stock is about 170,000 metric tons. If all of this gold were melded together, it would form a cube of about 68 feet per side. (Picture it fitting comfortably within a baseball infield.) At $1,750 per ounce –...
China’s Real Choices for Growth
Yves here. I particularly like this post because Michael Pettis takes some boundary conditions about China and works through their implications. One quibble I have is that he talks of "debt capacity limits." That depends who the issuer is. The national government could in theory "print," it has no need to issue debt to fund...
Book Review: Pandora’s Risk
This is two books in one, and very well done. The main part of the book explains risk and uncertainty in general terms, such that most people can understand it. But for those that can deal with complex math, the latter part of the book offers a lot of additional firepower. Risk is a tough...
Peak Government Debt
We’re in an interesting situation where most developed country governments are borrowing at a rapid rate, and their central banks are financing it. Public old age retirement and health plans are underfunded. Most major developed countries can’t grow rapidly, and there’s really nothing that can be done about it — competition from cheaper labor in...
Easing into a long yen
The Japanese yen reacted badly to the Bank of Japan’s decision to hit the QE button last month.And, before the LTRO (1, in particular) and the Bank of England’s operations,...
A game of krónur
Some intriguing thoughts from Sebastien Galy, Societe Generale FX strategist, on Icelandic politicians’ interest in the Canadian dollar:An independent currency for a country...
