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2017-04-30

Mr Macron has proposed a common fiscal policy, a joint finance minister, a eurozone debt instrument, and completion of the banking union.

He owes his voters an answer to the question of what he would do if, as is likely, Germany replies to his four proposals with: nein, nein, nein and nein.

Wolfgang Münchau, FT 30 April 2017


Mr Macron is the opposite of a souverainiste: he wants a fiscal and political union for the eurozone because he recognises that the only nation state that benefits from the current political arrangements in Europe is Germany, not France.

In that sense, he is the polar opposite of Marine Le Pen, leader of the rightwing National Front. 


Mr Macron wants to make the eurozone work; 
Ms Le Pen wants to destroy it.


Wolfgang Münchau, FT 1 January 2017


Ms Merkel does not say “no” to eurozone bonds. 
She says: “Not without treaty change.” 
The German constitutional court in Karlsruhe would never allow Germany’s sovereign guarantee to be given to its eurozone partners 
without them submitting to effective and centrally budgeted discipline.


Financial Times 31 May 2012



Climateer Investing: How Maritime Insurance Built Ancient Rome

Climateer Investing: How Maritime Insurance Built Ancient Rome: Yes, insurance, that's wot done it. Pre-coffeehouse insurance mart From Priceonomics, Mar. 18, 2016: In Ancient Rome, shipping...

Cecilia Skingsley: Den 23 september 1992 blev läget akut.

När var det som värst?
– För mig var det i september 1992. Allra värst var onsdagen och torsdagen den 23 och 24 september. Då var misstron mot Sverige total, vi hade länge syndat i så många avseenden.
I slutet av september hade den borgerliga regeringen och Socialdemokraterna just enats om ett första krispaket. Men bankernas finansieringskostnader skenade och boräntorna steg. På onsdagen hade all handel med svenska bostadsobligationer upphört.
Tidigare under krisen hade både Gotabanken och Nordbanken räddats med statligt stöd. Samtidigt hade en generell bankgaranti förberetts på Finansdepartementet. 
Den 23 september blev läget akut.
Stefan Ingves: "Enligt vår uppfattning stod det finansiella systemet i Sverige inför en kollaps den 24 september 1992."
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"Stålbadet i skuldfällan"
Rolf Englund på DN Debatt 26/8 1992


Tomas Fischer: Med Bildt mot Poltava 
Aftonbladet 22 december 1991








2017-04-28

Why would business leaders invest rather than buying back some of their companies’ own shares?

Why would business leaders invest in an uncertain world, rather than paying dividends to demanding (but generally risk-averse) investors, or buying back some of their companies’ own shares (thereby improving the price/earnings ratio and, better yet, increasing their own remuneration)? 

Jim O'Neill,  former chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and former Commercial Secretary to the UK Treasury,

Project Syndicate 26 April 2017



2017-04-22

- Members of the single currency are forced to issue obligations in a currency none of them can print. Why not just call for a global gold standard?

If you like the euro, why not just call for a global gold standard?

Argentina and Korea at least had the option of breaking their pegs to the dollar and printing money to support their banks. Similarly, countries bound by the gold standard always had the option of de-linking and re-pegging. 

There is no comparably straightforward way to exit the strictures of the euro.

So, for those who believe the euro was a good idea at the time and remains a good idea for prospective members, why would you oppose restoring the classical gold standard? Why should the benefits of integration and price stability be limited to Europe?


Om man har en sedelpress går man inte i konkurs, skrev jag den  4 november 2011

2017-04-19

IMF Global Financial Stability Report April 2017

prolonged low-growth, low-interest rate environment can fundamentally change the nature of financial intermediation. 

Combined with low credit demand, this would lower bank earnings, particularly for smaller, deposit-funded, and less diversified institutions, and 

presenting long-lasting challenges for life insurers and defined-benefit pension funds.

Read more here


About Banks at IntCom


California Legislature approved a package of groundwater-management laws

In 2014, the California Legislature approved a package of groundwater-management laws -- long after most other Western states had done so -- that are now slowwwwwly beginning to take effect.

Local groundwater-management agencies are being formed that will have to come up with plans to reach groundwater sustainability within 20 years.

Bloomberg 18 April 2017

Groundwater at Google


2017-04-17

Germany’s trade surplus is a threat to global stability

Amounts to 9 pc of GDP.

Measured by capita, it is roughly three times the size of the Chinese trade surplus

Matthew Lynn, Telegraph 15 April 2017

2017-04-14

The Eurogroup is asking Greece to do something unprecedented

Historical experience — not just Greece’s experience, but that of a typical advanced country — is inconsistent with the primary surplus  paths that would make Greece’s current debt sustainable.

New research from Jeromin Zettelmeyer, Eike Kreplin, and Ugo Panizza suggests Schaeuble is wrong: there is no reasonable likelihood that the Greek government can continue without significant further debt relief.

Matthew C Klein, FT 13 april 2017

Glass-Steagall Big US banks defy calls that they should be broken up

Talk from the Trump administration about restoring some kind of modern-day Glass-Steagall, 

a Depression-era law that prohibited banks from trading and investing at the same time as taking /insured/ deposits from consumers.

FT 14 April 2017

2017-04-13

Ms Lagarde insisted there could be no special treatment of Greece when it comes to any fund decision on joining the bailout.

“If and when I put a programme to the board of the IMF it will have to comply with the rules of any…programme,” she said. 

“There cannot be a specific case for any particular country.”


FT 12 April 2017

2017-04-12

Soaring Trump dollar risks global trade war and China currency crisis, warns Posen

We expect the dollar to rise by another 10pc to 15pc.

Politicians from the G5 powers ultimately intervened to drive down the Reagan dollar at the Plaza Accord in 1985

That attempt to manipulate currencies in defiance of economic fundamentals led - by a complex chain of causality - to the Nikkei bubble in Japan, and to the 1987 stock market crash on Wall Street.


Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 11 April 2017

2017-04-11

“Stein’s law” If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” China, Wolf


If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” 

This is “Stein’s law”, after its inventor Herbert Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Richard Nixon. 

Rüdiger Dornbusch, a US-based German economist, added: 

“The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought.”

Martin Wolf, FT 11 april 2017


Stein's Law: If something cannot go on for ever it will stop. 

Herbert Stein The Public Interest nr 97 Fall 1989

UK house prices may only be corrected by a market crash

according to economists from the University of Reading.

Bloomberg 11 April 2017

2017-04-05

What's Really Driving the US Trade Deficit. Capital flows dwarf trade flows

During this time trade imbalances were mostly determined by direct differences in the cost of traded goods, while capital flowed from one country to another mainly to balance trade flows. 

Today, however, conditions have changed dramatically. 

Capital flows dwarf trade flows, and investment decisions by fund managers determine their direction and size.


Michael Pettis, Bloomberg 3 April 2017

2017-04-04

Jacques Delors Institute: “At some point in the future, Europe will be hit by a new economic crisis. In its current set-up the euro is unlikely to survive that coming crisis,”

A group of leading economists and thinkers for the Jacques Delors Institute warned in a seminal report last year that EMU states will have to accept a supra-national system with a pooling of debts - anathema to the creditor bloc of Germany, Finland, Holland and Austria.

“At some point in the future, Europe will be hit by a new economic crisis. We do not know whether this will be in six weeks, six months or six years. But in its current set-up the euro is unlikely to survive that coming crisis,” they said.


It feels like 2008 again

In 2017 total household debt will reach its previous peak of $12.68 trillion, which it reached in the third quarter of 2008. 

MarketWatch 3 April 2017

2017-04-03

Homeowners are pulling cash out again - Olick


Fast-rising home prices gave homeowners more equity than many expected, and they are now tapping that equity at the fastest rate in eight years.

Diana Olick, CNBC 3 April 2017

2017-04-01

Trump has a big point on US Current Account Deficit

The US president signed an executive order on Friday 2017-03-31 calling for a study of the US’s $500bn annual trade deficit. 

FT 31 March 2017