Tag Archive: Economics

Money confuses and blurs economic relations

2016-06-30

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2016-06-30

Money, generally accepted medium of exchange, acts as a veil that confuse and blurs economic relations. This is especially true when it comes to intertemporal considerations. Whilst probably the most important institution in a free market, money can be highly destructive when politicized.

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China the lender of last resort for many oil producers

2016-06-21

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2016-06-21

Bawerk explains how China will be the lender of last resort of many oil producers. China might let collapse a smaller producer and become much smarter at covering its political bases across producer states to protect longer term sunk costs.

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Dumbest monetary experimental end game in history (including Havenstein and Gono’s)

2016-06-18

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2016-06-18

The Greatest Keynesian monetary experiment is not sustainable. It will not continue ad infinitum. Our money masters are just postponing the inevitable bust that will eventually correct these imbalances through worldwide capital re-allocation. Bawerk shows 3 graphs how investment growth gets slower and slower since the End of Bretton, how debt is increasing and how cheap dollar fuel debt-driven growth.

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Saudi-Arabia: Peg or Banking Crisis?

2016-06-04

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2016-06-04

During the reign of the mighty petro-dollar standard, it was necessary for major oil exporters to recycle their dollar holdings back into the dollar-based financial system to maintain their self-imposed exchange rate pegs. US government bonds are the...

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Notes from ECB Press Conference

2016-06-02

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2016-06-02

ECB press conference June 2 2016 Q; Risk to inflation balanced? April meeting, no conclusive evidence of second round effects, are they now? A; Additional stimulus beyond CSPP and TLTRO2 not necessary as we expect higher inflation. We do not see evid...

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Academic Skulduggery – How Ivory Tower Hubris Wrecks your Life

2016-05-23

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2016-05-23

In the 1970s economists started to incorporate rational expectations into their models and not long after the seminal Kydand & Prescott (1977) article named Rules Rather than Discretion: The Inconsistency of Optimal Plan was published. Their work has...

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Hillary Will be the Least of Your Worries – America has Economic Diarrhea

2016-04-28

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2016-04-28

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the official recession arbiter, the US economy is currently at its fourth longest expansion in history. By the sheer nature of a capitalistic society with its inherent cyclicality it is a ...

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Chinese Dragon: Breathing Credit Fumes

2016-04-24

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2016-04-24

Economic forecasting, no matter how complex the underlying model may be, is essentially about extrapolating historical trends. We showed last week how economic models completely fail to pick up on structural shifts using Japan as an example. On the other hand, if an economy doesn’t really change much, as in the case of Australia over the last thirty years, model “forecast” are generally quite accurate.

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Circulus in probando

2016-04-15

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2016-04-15

In the latest semi-annual Keynesian incantation spewed out by the world’s best pseudo-scientists, we learn that growth has been too slow for too long and that in itself is the cause of slow growth. First, they promote debt-funded consumption because ...

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OPEC’s Doha Dilemma: 3mb/d US lock in?

2016-03-29

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2016-03-29

Bawerk shows that more than 3 mb/d of American oil production was helped by US$55.5bn in credit facilities, by excessive debt. This production is now at risk and the debt may not be repaid. The big OPEC players are playing against US shale oil and some smaller OPEC members that have higher costs.

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Greenspan, the Sheepherder

2016-03-06

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2016-03-06

It is common knowledge by now that Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan oversaw, enabled and approved of, a major transition in the US economy. His infamous “Greenspan-put” in which his actions at the central bank would be driven, if not dictated,...

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Increasing Price Inflation is Not a Sign of Healthy Recovery, but the Last Stage Before Recession

2016-02-29

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2016-02-29

In a recent article by Kessler Companies (hat tip Zerohedge) they correctly point out that inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, have a tendency to accelerate as the US economy moves into a recession. Contrary to popular belief, the beg...

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Can Maduro Mayhem Last to 2017

2016-02-26

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2016-02-26

Things are turning increasingly ugly in Venezuela between President Maduro and the opposition MUD. The core political problem after December 2015 elections is the PSUV are now using the courts to neuter any opposition voices that formally hold a legi...

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How Italy will fail and drag down the European Project

2016-02-23

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2016-02-23

Italy is big enough to matter (it is the eight largest economy on the planet), but so uneventful that most does not pay any attention to what is going on there. We contend that Italy will, during the next year or two, be on everyone’s radar screen as it has the potential to derail the European project for real.

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China’s 3 trillion dollar mistake

When looking at the current state of the Chinese economy it is important to note what happened leading up the ongoing predicament. By managing the USD/CNY exchange rate the Chinese factory worker was essentially funding excess consumption in the Unit...

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What the Fed Did NOT do

2015-12-18

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2015-12-18

We will not spend much time discussing what the FOMC did as tons of ink have been spilled on that already. We will rather spend more time on what the FOMC did not do. A short recap will suffice; the FOMC did raise the interest rate band by 25 basis p...

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How Peak Debt Constrain the Fed from Moving Rates Higher

2015-12-11

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2015-12-11

We have argued for a long time that 2016 will probably be a year of recession in the US and the Federal Reserve’s intent on raising rates will only help expedite it. We believe the current rate cycle will be short lived as the Federal Reserve is cons...

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Unintended consequences of lift-off in a world of excess reserves

2015-11-28

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2015-11-28

Bar a disastrous NFP print this coming Friday the US Federal Reserve will change the target range for the Federal Reserve (Fed) Bank’s Funds rate from the current level of zero – 25bp to 25 – 50bp on December 16th.  The Fed will effectively raise the...

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What a Negative SWAP Spread Really Means

2015-11-21

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2015-11-21

SWAP spreads recently took a nosedive and are once again trading at negative levels, even for shorter maturities. As can be seen from the chart below, treasury yields, here represented by the 10 year maturity, rose during QE policies programs contrad...

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The Credit Multiplier – Revisited

2015-11-08

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2015-11-08

In last week’s article, we explained how the yield curve could cause GDP to contract in The Yield Curve and GDP – a causal relationship. Some of our readers suggested the analysis was wrong on back of an outdated view of modern money creation. The cr...

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