Tag Archive: Politics

Politics and Economics

2016-06-10

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2016-06-10

Many people understand politics and economics to be two different disciplines. I remember in graduate school more than two decades ago, many colleagues and professors operationally defined political economy as how politics, by which they meant the state, screws up economics. I spoke at the Fixed Income Leaders Summit earlier this week and teased that many seemed …

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Three Political Events before the UK Referendum

2016-06-03

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2016-06-03

“Every thinking person in America is  going to vote for you Governor Stevenson,” said an enthusiastic voter. “I am afraid that won’t do.  I need a majority,” reportedly quipped Stevenson (1952 or 1956).   The UK referendum on June 23 is the most important political event of the first half of the year.  A decision to …

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OPEC’s Game within a Game

2016-06-02

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2016-06-02

The fact OPEC just agreed to agree on nothing in Vienna. What next? Lots of noise about collective output vs. country allocations.

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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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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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Latin America – Seven Ugly Sisters in Deep Political Trouble

2016-03-24

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2016-03-24

Get beyond endless Latin American headlines burning column inches and you come to far broader strategic conclusion: The seven ‘ugly Latino sisters’, namely Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Mexico and Argentina are all deep political trouble from collapsed benchmark prices.

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Revolutionary Guards: The Way of the Iranian Future

2016-03-03

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2016-03-03

Iranian elections have supposedly put a very nice ‘moderate’ spin on Iranian politics in parliamentary ranks, and more importantly, Assembly of Experts composition. While it would be churlish to deny, it represents a significant step forward for Pres...

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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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How the Fed gave away its independence – Interest Rate Sensitivity at ZLB

2015-11-15

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2015-11-15

In fiscal year 2014, which ended September 30 2014, the Federal government of the United States reported a cumulative deficit of US$484 billion, while the total debt outstanding increased by more than a trillion dollars. For fiscal year 2015, the dif...

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