Englund

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 20...

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...

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. Vice riksbankchef Cecilia Skingsley, SvD  30 april 2017   Stefan Ingves: "Enligt vår uppfattning stod det finansiella systemet i Sverige inför en kollaps den 24 september 1992." Läs mer här "Stålbadet i skuldfällan" Rolf Englund på DN Debatt 26/8 1992 Tomas Fischer: Med Bildt mot Poltava   Aftonbladet 22 decemb...

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 $4 Trillion of Corporate Equity Liquidated Since 2000

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? Matthew C Klein, FT Alphaville 21 April 2017 Om man har en sedelpress går man inte i konkurs, skrev jag den  4 november 2011

David Stockman 31 March 2017 More about the stockmarket David Stockman

A  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

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

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

Noahpinion: Why the 101 model doesn't work for labor markets : A lot of people have trouble wrapping their heads around the idea that the basic "Econ 101" model - the undifferentiated, sing...

Gavyn Davies, 15 April 2017

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

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

“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

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

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

according to economists from the University of Reading. Bloomberg 11 April 2017

Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog, zerohedge, 7 April 2017

Simon Maierhofer, MarketWatch 6 April 2017

The U.S. trade deficit totaled $501 billion in 2016 and China accounted for about 62% of the overall gap. MarketWatch 6 April 2017

That is where danger now lies. Martin Wolf, FT 4 April 2017

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

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. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 3 April 2017

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

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

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