Tag Archive: monetization of debt

More Signs the End is Nigh

Hyperventilating Minds “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun,” explained Solomon in Ecclesiastes, nearly 3,000 years ago. Perhaps the advent of negative yielding debt would have been cause for Solomon to reconsider his axiom. We can only speculate on what his motive would be.

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“It’s Prohibited By Law” – A Problem Emerges For Japan’s “Helicopter Money” Plans

Over the past four days, risk assets have been on a tear, led by the collapsing Yen and soaring Nikkei, as the market has digested daily news that - as we predicted last week - Bernanke has been urging Japan to become the first developed country to unleash the monetary helicopter, in which the central banks directly funds government fiscal spending, most recently with an overnight report that Bernanke has pushed Abe and Kuroda to sell perpetual...

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Turning Stones Into Bread – The Japanese Miracle

  Stuffing the Futon Our friend Ramsey Su just asked what Haruhiko Kuroda and Shinzo Abe are going to do now in light of the strong yen (aside from perhaps doing the honorable thing). Isn’t it time to just “wipe out some debt with the stroke of a pen...

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Is the Economy a Machine?

  A Science Goes Astray Human beings have a strong tendency to look for patterns. The natural sciences have shown that the universe is governed by laws, the effects of which are observable and measurable in an objective manner. Mostly, anyway — there...

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The Pitfalls of Currency Manipulation – A History of Interventionist Failure

  The G-20 and Policy Coordination Readers may recall that the last G20 pow-wow (see “The Gasbag Gabfest” for details) featured an uncharacteristic lack of grandiose announcements, a fact we welcomed with great relief. The previously announced “900 p...

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Did Austrian Economists Get the Recovery Wrong?

Austrians got the recovery after the financial crisis wrong. Monetary expansion did not lead to hyperinflation and a collapse of central banks. Their mistake was that the Austrian principle of "too cheap money leads to wrong investments", is currently not valid. Due to high risk aversion after the financial crisis, firms do only only best projects. Austrian economists were right before the crisis, but after the crisis Keynesians and Germans with...

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