Economic (and financial crisis) links
Eros is driving the ebooks boom.
A new approach to restaurants that is wrong at so many levels …
Study suggests that popularity at school is income positive.
Arguing that government providing schooling is mostly about controlling the socialisation of students. (Having the regulator be the provider is not how you would do it on either quality of education or equality of opportunity grounds.)
What is wrong with philosopher Peter Singer’s argument equating giving to Oxfam etc to saving a drowning person.
On the best forecasts being market forecasts: Given a choice between the forecast of a single superman, and a market full of “sub-men”, I’ll go with the sub-men.
About three Octobers: I’m referring to 1929, 1937, 2008, which all saw severe stock market crashes, accompanied by falling commodity prices. We can better understand our current crisis if we first step back and look at the two earlier October crashes, which bear some interesting resemblances to recent events.
Fiscal and monetary policy are suffering from a converging ineffectiveness: When monetary policy has reached the zero lower bound and deflation risk dominates the probability distribution, monetary and fiscal policy effectively become one. Cutting rates to, or close to, zero has not been a mistake, but it has been ineffective; it is the most striking example of “pushing on a string” I have witnessed in my lifetime. The reason, again, is the impaired credit intermediation system. Translation: multipliers are not working.
A fairly comprehensive piece on the global economic situation. Bad economic news from Asia. About that.
A paper on the “strongly procyclical” effect of marked-to-market balance sheets. Leveraging is everywhere, including large law firms.
On the problems with nationalising banks. Problems with uncertainty and guaranteeing bank bondholders.
Sales of safes are increasing. There are lots of dollars slodging around to put in them. A talk by Krugman on the return of Depression economics (slides, pdf).
Some problems with cap-and-trade emission controls, including its highly regressive nature.
Vaclav Klaus’s notes to a speech on capitalism and crisis. As finance minister, he had to deal with a bigger contraction of the Czech economy than the current one the US is undergoing. Klaus on the current economic situation.
Debates within the US Fed over monetary policy. About that. The European Central Bank is not helping.
US banks lent to dodgy mortgages, European banks to dodgy countries.
The US will invite the wealthy to invest in the bailout. ( “Crowding out” anyone?) Trying to keep track of where the bailout billions are going.
Wall St is starting to be very unkind about the Obama economic team. Doubts appear to be spreading. The Administration is reported to be “overwhelmed” by the crisis and the President tired: Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk. . Being committed to the government doing ever-more means ever-more for government to do.
Germany, Italy and (especially) Japan had bigger output contractions in the last quarter of 2008 than the US.
A not very sensible regulation. How tickets were distributed for Obama’s Inauguration.
Unlike other car-makers, Hyundai has managed to increase sales.
Arguing against anti-suburban policies: … states and communities that have implemented the land-use regulations common to "smart growth" strategies are the same states and communities that have seen their housing prices soar over the past decade and have experienced the most severe delinquency and foreclosure rates, as well as the sharpest declines in house values in the past year. In sum, these "smart growth" strategies are an important contributing factor in the housing finance mess and severe recession that now confront the United States and several other countries that have implemented the same abusive land-use regulations. … A number of other English-speaking nations, notably the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, have land-use regulations that are more intense than those generally in force in the U.S.-and even higher housing prices as a result.
About economic growth: Economic growth is terribly important. Small differences in growth rates eventually overwhelm most other considerations, so the clustering and innovation externalities that create growth differences deserve far more public attention … The truth is that the artistic creations or intellectual insights we most admire for their striking “creativity” matter little for economic growth. Instead, most of the innovations that matter are the tiny changes we constantly make to the millions of procedures and methods we use. … What we lack is not more suggestions for change, but better ways to identify the most promising suggestions, and ways to encourage people to pass suggestions on to those who can best act on them. Worrying about the effect of policy on innovation.
A salient feature of the period since 1980 has been long booms and short and mild recessions. One of the persistent factors leading to the current crisis seems to have been an over-presumption of growth. Not merely in housing asset price booms due to land-rationing (though that was a major factor, exacerbated by US federal "make it easier to lend to the riskier" policy) but more widely. Over-leveraging took many forms (low household savings-also exacerbated by government policy-deficit financing, multiplication of credit instruments, etc). Note this over-presumption occurred among policy makers as well as private agents. There is a massive retreat to financial safety going on (hoarding cash, increasing saving, paying off debt, not lending) among private agents which will continue while there are such high levels of uncertainty.
A new approach to restaurants that is wrong at so many levels …
Study suggests that popularity at school is income positive.
Arguing that government providing schooling is mostly about controlling the socialisation of students. (Having the regulator be the provider is not how you would do it on either quality of education or equality of opportunity grounds.)
What is wrong with philosopher Peter Singer’s argument equating giving to Oxfam etc to saving a drowning person.
On the best forecasts being market forecasts: Given a choice between the forecast of a single superman, and a market full of “sub-men”, I’ll go with the sub-men.
About three Octobers: I’m referring to 1929, 1937, 2008, which all saw severe stock market crashes, accompanied by falling commodity prices. We can better understand our current crisis if we first step back and look at the two earlier October crashes, which bear some interesting resemblances to recent events.
Fiscal and monetary policy are suffering from a converging ineffectiveness: When monetary policy has reached the zero lower bound and deflation risk dominates the probability distribution, monetary and fiscal policy effectively become one. Cutting rates to, or close to, zero has not been a mistake, but it has been ineffective; it is the most striking example of “pushing on a string” I have witnessed in my lifetime. The reason, again, is the impaired credit intermediation system. Translation: multipliers are not working.
A fairly comprehensive piece on the global economic situation. Bad economic news from Asia. About that.
A paper on the “strongly procyclical” effect of marked-to-market balance sheets. Leveraging is everywhere, including large law firms.
On the problems with nationalising banks. Problems with uncertainty and guaranteeing bank bondholders.
Sales of safes are increasing. There are lots of dollars slodging around to put in them. A talk by Krugman on the return of Depression economics (slides, pdf).
Some problems with cap-and-trade emission controls, including its highly regressive nature.
Vaclav Klaus’s notes to a speech on capitalism and crisis. As finance minister, he had to deal with a bigger contraction of the Czech economy than the current one the US is undergoing. Klaus on the current economic situation.
Debates within the US Fed over monetary policy. About that. The European Central Bank is not helping.
US banks lent to dodgy mortgages, European banks to dodgy countries.
The US will invite the wealthy to invest in the bailout. ( “Crowding out” anyone?) Trying to keep track of where the bailout billions are going.
Wall St is starting to be very unkind about the Obama economic team. Doubts appear to be spreading. The Administration is reported to be “overwhelmed” by the crisis and the President tired: Allies of Mr Obama say his weary appearance in the Oval Office with Mr Brown illustrates the strain he is now under, and the president's surprise at the sheer volume of business that crosses his desk. . Being committed to the government doing ever-more means ever-more for government to do.
Germany, Italy and (especially) Japan had bigger output contractions in the last quarter of 2008 than the US.
A not very sensible regulation. How tickets were distributed for Obama’s Inauguration.
Unlike other car-makers, Hyundai has managed to increase sales.
Arguing against anti-suburban policies: … states and communities that have implemented the land-use regulations common to "smart growth" strategies are the same states and communities that have seen their housing prices soar over the past decade and have experienced the most severe delinquency and foreclosure rates, as well as the sharpest declines in house values in the past year. In sum, these "smart growth" strategies are an important contributing factor in the housing finance mess and severe recession that now confront the United States and several other countries that have implemented the same abusive land-use regulations. … A number of other English-speaking nations, notably the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland, have land-use regulations that are more intense than those generally in force in the U.S.-and even higher housing prices as a result.
About economic growth: Economic growth is terribly important. Small differences in growth rates eventually overwhelm most other considerations, so the clustering and innovation externalities that create growth differences deserve far more public attention … The truth is that the artistic creations or intellectual insights we most admire for their striking “creativity” matter little for economic growth. Instead, most of the innovations that matter are the tiny changes we constantly make to the millions of procedures and methods we use. … What we lack is not more suggestions for change, but better ways to identify the most promising suggestions, and ways to encourage people to pass suggestions on to those who can best act on them. Worrying about the effect of policy on innovation.
A salient feature of the period since 1980 has been long booms and short and mild recessions. One of the persistent factors leading to the current crisis seems to have been an over-presumption of growth. Not merely in housing asset price booms due to land-rationing (though that was a major factor, exacerbated by US federal "make it easier to lend to the riskier" policy) but more widely. Over-leveraging took many forms (low household savings-also exacerbated by government policy-deficit financing, multiplication of credit instruments, etc). Note this over-presumption occurred among policy makers as well as private agents. There is a massive retreat to financial safety going on (hoarding cash, increasing saving, paying off debt, not lending) among private agents which will continue while there are such high levels of uncertainty.