The recent massive sell-off in global stock markets, despite an earlier coordinated half-point interest rate reduction in the U.S. and Europe, reflects the continuing failure of policy to come to grips with the scale of the problem. Policy has been consistently marked by “Too little, too late” – and in some instances there have been outright blunders, as in the U.S. Treasury’s decision to let Lehman Brothers fail. Read the rest of this entry »
Cut Interest Rates Again
October 17th, 2008Why Federal Reserve Policy Is Failing
October 6th, 2008The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury continue to fail in their attempts to stabilize the U.S. financial system. That is due to failure to grasp the nature of the problem, which concerns the parallel banking system. Rescue policy remains stuck in the past, focused on the traditional banking system while ignoring the parallel unregulated system that was permitted to develop over the past twenty-five years. Read the rest of this entry »
Saving the Financial System
September 25th, 2008A friend told me the economist Charles Kindelberger had two rules for a credit economy. Rule one was everybody should know that if they get over-extended they will not be bailed-out. Rule two was if everybody gets over-extended they must be bailed out. The U.S. economy has over-extended itself, triggering rule two. But that still leaves open how a bailout should be designed since designs are not all equal. Read the rest of this entry »
The Liquidation Trap
September 17th, 2008The U.S. financial system is caught in a destructive liquidation trap that has falling asset prices cause financial distress, in turn compelling further asset sales and price declines. If unaddressed, it risks sending the economy into deep recession – or even depression. Read the rest of this entry »
Decoupling vs. the Concertina Effect
September 8th, 2008Over the last year, as the U.S. economy has slipped toward (and likely into) recession, there has been much talk of decoupling. According to this idea the global economy has decoupled from the U.S. economy and can continue growing even if the U.S. goes into recession. Read the rest of this entry »
Speculators at the Pumps
August 26th, 2008Until a few weeks ago, while oil prices were surging, debate raged about the relative roles of economic fundamentals and speculation in boosting oil prices. Although oil prices have now fallen back from their peak, that debate must not be forgotten, for it has profound policy implications that government officials would be derelict to ignore. Read the rest of this entry »
Social Origins of the American Corporate Predator State
August 13th, 2008Jamie Galbraith’s recent book describes modern (Bush-Cheney) Republicanism as creating a “predator state”. Its predatory aspects are starkly visible in the gangs of corporate lobbyists who roam Washington DC, the Halliburton Iraq war procurement scandal, and the corruption and incompetence that surrounded the Hurricane Katrina relief effort. Read the rest of this entry »
Scapegoating Regulation
August 8th, 2008Many progressives now believe the age of Milton Friedman may be drawing to a close. Their hope is the current financial crisis has shown the costs and dangers of inadequate market regulation, thereby discrediting the anti- regulation philosophy of Milton Friedman and his Chicago School colleagues. Read the rest of this entry »
Iron Grip
July 3rd, 2008Iron ore prices have recently been in the headlines, having jumped eighty-five percent. This news is troubling as such price increases threaten to raise steel prices, which will add to cost inflation and further undermine economic activity. Read the rest of this entry »
Beating the Oil Barons
June 24th, 2008Over the past eighteen months, oil prices have more than doubled, inflicting huge costs on the global economy. Strong global demand, owing to emerging economies like China, has undoubtedly fueled some of the price increase. But the scale of the price spike exceeds normal demand and supply factors, pointing to the role of speculation – and underscoring the need for policy action to clean up the oil market. Read the rest of this entry »