Index of Posts

The lesson of GameStop brought home

A burning topic, figuratively and literally.

Of late there has been a lot of chatter about the so-called yield curve, usually to complain about its incomprehensibility. This lends an aura of mystery to it, which coupled with lore about its alleged capacity to predict recessions, turns it into a modern-day Urim and Thummim. But in actuality, there is nothing so mysterious … Continue reading “Understanding the yield curve”

If so, it isn’t because of this So the Wall Street Journal published an article about how Donald Trump is losing the trade war with China. A serious matter, if true. Yet whether it’s true or not, this article doesn’t make the case, even though written by Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council … Continue reading “WSJ: Trump is losing the trade war with China”

BY THE REV. THOMAS C. HALL, D.D., PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. Modern Protestantism is woefully ignorant of its most formid­able rival. The Catholic Church has been painfully awakened in France, Belgium and Italy. Protestantism awaits its awakening. There is now no country of economic importance without a grow­ing party raising the banner of … Continue reading “Socialism as a Rival of Organized Christianity”

The cornerstone of John Maynard Keynes’ General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is the rejection of one of the pillars of classical economics, and indeed of virtue itself classically understood. That pillar is saving. In that classical world, saving is a fundamentally important action, crucial to economic survival and growth. From it flows the … Continue reading “The Paradox of Unthrift Waiting for another – doubtless very different – Keynes“

There is something different, something new and unprecedented, about the generations of the 20th and 21st centuries as compared with all  those that went before them. This was already noted in 1930 by the great Spanish journalist and philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, when he unveiled[1] the phenomenon of el hombre-masa, the mass-man, otherwise known … Continue reading “Consumers of the World, Unite! A Dissection of Contemporary Mass-Man“

The current fracas with regard to immigration through the southern border of the United States will die down in time, and another issue will replace it in the headlines, in breaking news announcements, in round-table discussions. There will not be a resolution any time soon. But what is important is to understand the underlying issues … Continue reading “Immigration, Migration, and Imbalances”

The trickle of articles discussing the proposed Border Adjustment Tax (BAT) has turned into a veritable flood. Not surprisingly, the lion’s share of these articles oppose the idea of border adjustment. It would be tedious to run through them all; suffice it to say that the primary argument is that such a tax would raise … Continue reading “Border-Adjustment Sleight of Hand? Sense and Nonsense on the Border Adjustment Tax“

The wait continues regarding the tax reform proposal to come out of the White House and be taken up by Congress. Despite the headlines dominated by more peripheral matters, tax reform is shaping up to be one of the cruxes to the success of the new administration. It is not simply a matter of reducing … Continue reading “A Monetary Solution to Trade Imbalances? Gilder and the Gold Standard“

The persistent trade deficit being run by the US, which is the major manifestation of the lopsided global trading system, has to be dealt with to ward off economic disaster. The reason for this is outlined specifically in this previous post, and generally in these posts. It is a sad but revealing commentary that it has … Continue reading “The Border Adjustment Tax The Way Forward, or Regrettable Sidetrack?“

The fledgling Trump administration has been greeted by an explosion of resistance on the part of the Left. The Democratic Party has shown its antipathy in various ways. For one thing, many Democratic members of Congress declined to attend the inauguration. For another, Senate Democrats have delayed the appointments of President Trump’s cabinet appointees, even … Continue reading “The Shape of Things to Come?”

Since the November election results, markets have been gaining – so much so that the big Wall Street trading firms booked eye-popping earnings in the fourth quarter. “Citigroup’s $3.7 billion trading haul was its best fourth-quarter showing since the financial crisis. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which reported its results last week, had its best fourth-quarter for trading ever,” reports … Continue reading “Trumponomics and the Strong Dollar”

Donald Trump’s election victory on November 8th is now a fact. Reactions to it have not been lacking, of course. On the economic front, they have ranged from the cautiously optimistic to predictions of utter doom. For their part, the financial markets went from downturn to upturn in short order (as chronicled here by Jerry … Continue reading “Trumponomics and the Great Rebalancing”

The 2013 movie Elysium depicts a dystopian future of unremitting, jarring poverty juxtaposed with serene, detached wealth. Literally detached: wealth resides in a lavishly equipped, lebensraum-furnished space station, high above an impoverished, exhausted Earth. The planet is only useful as a source of provision and maintenance for the space station; its fruits have been extracted … Continue reading “On the Road to Elysium When fiction approaches fact“

I am struck with disbelief with the apparently unlimited extent of their smug arrogance. It is these very men (and yes, they are mostly men!) who are singularly responsible for the mess we are in. Blair and Clinton in particular presided over the massive accumulation of debt, reckless deregulation and disproportionate and unbalanced boom in … Continue reading “Carrying the Water The Role of the Left in the Neoliberal Order“

We can conduct a similar analysis of the European economy as we did for the US economy. We will restrict our discussion to the Euro Area, the countries which share a common currency, the euro. The euro creates a unique, separate trading bloc, the internal dynamics of which need to be understood both to assess the … Continue reading “Prospects for the European Economy”

THE WORLD ECONOMY IN RÉSUMÉ In the previous post we outlined the structural condition of the world economy, and in particular the structural flaws it contains. The main flaw is the divorce between production and consumption. Prior to the establishment of this new macroeconomic structure, supply and demand were roughly in balance in the domestic … Continue reading “Prospects for the US Economy”

The Economics of the 2016 Election Cycle The current election cycle in the United States is like none other in recent memory. At least in terms of vitriol, it is no contest. But beyond the partisan slams back and forth lies a deeper fundamental reality which really lies at the heart of the contest. In … Continue reading “What This Election is Really All About”

Michael Pettis is one contemporary economist whose blog is worth reading. His books The Volatility Machine and The Great Rebalancing are required reading for those who would understand the workings of international trade relations, currency movements, and financial markets. His comments regarding the recent “Brexit” vote by the UK’s electorate are worth delving into. “Last Friday’s … Continue reading “Pettis on Brexit”

Much has been written on the recent decision by the UK to leave the European Union. Much of it is emotion-driven. But that is no way to assess such an important turn of events. The actual significance is, in significant degree, economic in nature. This calls for an economic analysis, to which we now turn. … Continue reading “The Economic Consequences of the Release (i.e., Brexit)”

Given the rancorous debate unleashed by the UK electorate’s decision to depart the European Union – in particular, regarding the damage to the UK economy that independence might bring – it seems wise to re-examine the foundations of economic prosperity and its relationship to political and legal factors. I do so by examining Hernando de … Continue reading “The Mystery of Capital in Context”

The British vote on June 23rd, 2016, to leave the European Union, is one of those events that will long be remembered. Yet there was another event involving Britain on the one hand and the European Union (then Community) on the other, that likewise came as a shock, and which likewise lives on in the … Continue reading “Maggie’s Revenge”

When Schumpeter writes, “Now to the question: what is a savings account?”,[1] he is not being facetious. There is more to savings than meets the eye. Of course, the bare fact of saving is simple enough to understand. Rather than spend all of our earnings, we take some and put it to one side. What … Continue reading “The Problem of Saving”

Do floating exchange rates work? By which we mean, do floating exchange rates bring countries, national economies, into equilibrium? Equilibrium here means that trade between countries is in balance. Thus, exports and imports of goods and services, although in constant fluctuation as economies progress along divergent paths, balance each other over time. With this we do … Continue reading “The Trouble with Exchange Rates”

Ever since I can remember I have been a proponent of free trade. It seemed the logical thing: why should the government restrict economic activity which in itself is legal and aboveboard? And when I began exploring economic theory, lo and behold, free trade was at the forefront of most every exposition. It was the … Continue reading “Confessions of a Free Trade Advocate”

Michael Lewis, the author of various illuminating accounts of the events and progressions of the great financial crisis of 2008 – one of which became an Oscar-winning Hollywood movie – this time provides us with an illuminating account of someone else’s book – Mervyn King’s newly published The End of Alchemy. The thesis is a … Continue reading “An End to Alchemy?”

At first glance the notion of a national economy would seem to be self-evident. After all, the lion’s share of economic data comes in the form of “national accounts,” which treat the nation as a self-contained economic entity, like a business. And the talk, when it comes to the economy, is always of how the … Continue reading “National Economy?”

World system analysis was first developed in the early 1970s as an alternative to the traditional nation-state-oriented analysis of the global economy. In its initial form (which has since been expanded – even, significantly, to ancient Mesopotamia[1]) the focus was put on the modern world system, as evidenced by the title of the pioneering work … Continue reading “Capitalism and the “Modern World System””

Western Christendom experienced a sea change in the late 17th century. On one side of that divide was theological dogmatics, scholastic philosophy, the divine right of kings and priests, and, seemingly in their train, wars of religion; on the other side, there was theological indifference, mechanical philosophy, government by consent of the governed, latitudinarian and … Continue reading “Isaac Newton and the Alchemy of Finance”

“Honest money” is a phrase bandied about as a self-evident truth. As the accompanying graph indicates, its incidence coincides with the heyday of the gold standard. As such, it is the pithy summary of a strongly-held view on the nature of money, which at the time of the gold standard had a highly political charge. … Continue reading “Honest Money?”

Seeing as how the gold standard is a “money method”[1] by which all exchange value is made dependent upon the weight of a certain substance, viz., gold, it would seem appropriate to “weigh it up” to determine whether or not, “weighed in the balance,” it is “found wanting.” Indeed, weight measurement was the standard of … Continue reading “Weighing the Gold Standard”

In a previous post (“Quantitative Easing and Substitutionary Atonement”), I discussed some of the underlying philosophy of quantitative easing, the latest of the Fed’s attempts to “stimulate” the economy. Quantitative easing, to recap, is the term for central bank purchases of assets on the open market. The difference with traditional “open-market operations” is twofold. Firstly, the purpose: … Continue reading “Another Look at Quantitative Easing”

As is the case with the vast majority of commentators on this topic, I have not read Thomas Piketty’s book (Capital in the Twenty-First Century). The following is therefore gleaned from other sources, mainly this interview, from which, unless otherwise indicated, the following quotations are taken. The first thing to say is that, on the … Continue reading “Thoughts on the Piketty Thesis”

In attempting to explain to my wife why investing in the stock market right now is not such a good idea, I came up with a little graph, which at one glance reveals the matter succinctly. Here it is:   It shows that the stock market growth of recent years has less to do with … Continue reading “Quantitative Easing and Substitutionary Atonement”

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single country in possession of a current account surplus must be in need of an export market.” With apologies to Jane Austen, of course: the sentiment thus expressed actually is anything but universally acknowledged. In fact, it flies in the face of received wisdom. We are accustomed … Continue reading “Is There a PIIG in Germany’s Parlor?”

In the system we have now, we do use both a reserve restriction and an asset restriction. But, the modern reserve restriction has changed fundamentally, and has nothing to do with the monetarist understanding of reserve restrictions, except in a purely formal sense. In the day of specie convertibility, reserve restriction had a definite functionality. … Continue reading “Fact and Fiction on Reserve Requirements”

In a comment posted under an article by my friend Jerry Bowyer (Where’s the Hyperinflation?), “ps61penn62prin64” writes that “private currency monetary systems… are doomed to fail the interest of American citizens.” Bowyer’s article discusses the sizeable increase in the money supply generated by the Fed, and how this has — or has not — affected … Continue reading “Private Issue of Money — the Root of Our Monetary Problem?”

This blog entry is for anyone who believes, as John Tamny here puts it, that “Fractional reserve banking quite simple IS.” Among the many good points Tamny makes in his article, there is the underlying assumption that our system is, in some important sense, a fractional-reserve system. But is this a valid contention? My contention … Continue reading “Why We Do NOT Have a Fractional-Reserve System”

In his excellent book The New Lombard Street, Perry Mehrling writes of “a world that never was … Jimmy Stewart banking of blessed memory” (p. 117). This is an obvious  reference to one of Jimmy Stewart’s most famous roles: George Bailey in the holiday classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life. In the movie, Bailey is … Continue reading “Jimmy Stewart Banking versus James Steuart Banking”

The euro seems to be on its last legs, and the vision which inspired its genesis seems to have vanished from the politicians sponsoring it. The recent spat with England and Prime Minister Cameron has only served to highlight the vacuum in vision. Previously, whenever England was scapegoated, English politicians skulked like whipped curs, and … Continue reading “How to Make the Euro Project Work”

Well it’s about time I woke up from hibernation to begin posting again. Not much to say for awhile there, not to mention being preoccupied with finishing the next volume of the Stahl translation, about the state and constitutional law. I hope to have it published within a month (that’s quite optimistic though). At any … Continue reading “Cloverfield Government”

We hear a lot these days about the current financial crisis being one of trust. Banks don’t trust each other any more, lenders don’t trust borrowers, investors don’t trust who or what they are investing in. That is all true, but it does not get to the heart of the matter. What is trust? It … Continue reading “What is a Crisis of Trust?”

The stock markets continue to plummet in unnerving fashion. The blame for it is centering on the “bailout” package — was it too little too late, was it too much, was the passage of it a dispiriting display of bad leadership. I think it goes deeper than that. The bailout was never meant to solve … Continue reading “What’s Behind the Meltdown”

At bottom, the issue involved in this financial crisis is false weights and measures. That is, a standard of valuation that is manipulated, making people believe they are receiving something other (of lesser value) than they actually are. The Bible has this to say about such false weights and measures: Le 19:36 Just balances, just … Continue reading “The Bottom Line: False Weights and Measures”

One of the themes running through my head regarding a description of the current financial crisis is that of the similarity of subprime mortgages to HIV. Just as HIV gets in the bloodstream and destroys immune capacity, subprime mortgages were packaged together in MSOs and CDOs which, circulating through the banking system, in turn have … Continue reading “More than an Analogy?”