Englund

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYTyluv4Gws

David Stockman, December 28th, 2017

Heinrich Brüning -  When the Reichstag threw out his austerity budget, it was imposed by presidential decree. Hitler won the 1932 general election with a landslide.  The rest, as they say, is history. Frances Coppola 31 August 2014

Ända sedan 1999 är Volvo AB den blågula fordonsjuvelen som förblev ”svenskägd”, när Volvo Cars knoppades av till utländska intressen. Här är samtidshistorien om Volvo AB där kineserna nu köper in sig. SvD 27 december 2017

Regulators, led by Alan Greenspan at the Fed, believed the efficient markets hypothesis, that bankers’ self-interest would avert excesses. Martin Wolf, 1 December 2017 "I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms," said Greenspan. The Guardian 24 October 2008

Steve Keen  was one of the economists who knew there was big trouble brewing in the years leading up to the financial crisis of a decade ago but whose warnings were ignored.  Larry Elliott, the Guardian's economics editor, 17 December 2017

Open Culture 20 December 2017

It has already appreciated against the dollar this year, compared to other popular funding currencies such as the yen and the Swiss franc. The yen and the krona are still below their fair value, deliberately weakened by central banks attempting to stave off deflation. FT 20 December 2017 Carry Trade

SvD 20 december 2017

The period of disinflation from the late 1980s to 2007, commonly referred to as the “Great Moderation.” The end of the Great Moderation should have disabused policymakers of their belief that low inflation guarantees future economic stability. If anything, the opposite has been true. Global debt ratios have risen sharply since the financial crisis began, while traditional lenders’ margins have been squeezed, raising questions about their overall health.  And as lending has continued to migrate further into the “shadows,” price discovery in financial markets has become severely compromised, to the point that many assets now seem to be overvalued. William White, Project Syndicate 14 December 2017 

FT 20 December 2017

EU var svaret på allt. Dessutom var det där pengarna fanns. Fast mer än för EU:s pengar intresserade sig östeuropéerna sällan.  I stället påminde Bryssel dem alltför mycket om de främmande maktcentrum som förr dikterat deras tillvaro. Men efter att ha blivit av med habsburgarna, ottomanerna och till sist också moskoviterna, såg östeuropéerna äntligen chansen att efter 1989 återuppta sitt stora projekt: den egna nationalstaten. I mer än hundra år, fast ibland med långa avbrott, har man envist arbetat på den mer än på något annat, etniskt rensat ut minoriteter och grannar, ibland slagit ihjäl dem i småkrig på sparlåga, stöttat landsmän på andra sidan gränsen när man inte försökt rita om Europas karta till den egna nationens fördel. Västeuropa har tagit mycket liten notis om denna östeuropeiska vision, till och med halvt omedvetet försökt motverka den med statsbildningar som Tjeckoslovakien och Jugoslavien som bara ljumt intresserade dem som skulle leva i dessa mångnationella konst

At risk are the very fundamentals that underpin current optimism. One or more of these pillars of complacency will, I suspect, crumble in 2018. Stephen S. Roach, Projet Syndicate 14 December 2017

Axess 2013-04-11

This is one of the interesting revelations in Varoufakis’s fascinating account of his tenure as finance minister.  “You are probably the one [in the Eurogroup] who understands that the eurozone is unsustainable,” Varoufakis quotes Schäuble as telling him. “The eurozone is constructed wrongly. We should have a political union, there is no doubt about it.” But there is also an alternative, much less ambitious view, according to which neither fiscal nor political union is needed.  What needs to be done instead is to de-link private finance from public finance, insulating each from the malfeasance of the other. Dani Rodrik, Project Syndicate 11 December 2017

Thorbjörn Fälldin förhindrade ett systemskifte som – om det fullföljts i enlighet med de ursprungliga planerna – hade kunnat förvandla Sverige till vad Venezuela är idag. Per T Ohlsson, Sydsvenskan 31 Juli 2016

  Kritikerna menar att det kan bli följden vid en global kris. Johan Carlström, SvD 15 december 2017

But have Europe’s banks got off lightly? The Economist print 14 December 2017

Köpstarka bostadsspekulanter med höga löner eller en förmögenhet som ger dem gräddfil till den svenska överhettade bostadsmarknaden är de som gynnas av undantaget för lyxlägenheter. För nyproduktion är i de allra flesta fall just lyxlägenheter. Det är för att man byggt för dom rikaste som kommunerna kunnat kammat hem ohemula pengar på markförsäljning och bostadsbyggarna kunnat vada i vinster de senaste åren. Patricia Hedelius SvD 11 december 2017

But the bears are out there Buttonwood, The Economist print 7 December 2017

German SPD leader says EU member states must sign up to a federal union or leave the bloc Martin Schulz told a party conference in Berlin on Thursday that he wanted EU member states to agree a new “constitutional treaty” to establish a federal union and that countries that did not sign up would have to leave the bloc. FT 7 december 2017 Det tidigare försöket, som väljarna i Frankrike och Nederländerna sade nej till, konventets förslag, som senare ersattes av Lissabonfördraget. Problemets kärna är att det inte går att ha EMU om man inte vill ha ett Federalt Europa, styrt från Bryssel och Frankfurt, eller om det blir Berlin.  Rolf Englund, Nya Wermlands-Tidningen, 11 juni 2001

The signs are widespread.  Yields on European junk bonds have fallen below US Treasuries. Emerging market countries with a history of default, such as Argentina, have issued 100-year bonds.... Alberto Gallo FT 6 December 2017

The European Commission is urging governments and the European Parliament to complete the EU’s banking union by 2019 and thus cut the “doom loop”, in which weak banks and sovereigns drag each other down One big missing piece is a common European deposit-insurance scheme. The Economist print 30 November 2017

Anders Elgemyr analytiker på Jarl Securities har sammanställt en lista över de mest riskfyllda aktierna kopplade till bostäder. – Men så länge inget systemkritiskt bolag havererar s om Nyckeln som drog med sig Gota Bank i början av 90-talet  så lär marknaden kunna rida ut stormen.  I bästa fall återhämtar sig marknaden inom loppet av två år eftersom det finns en stor underliggande efterfrågan i Sverige. Patricia Hedelius SvD 6 december 2017

The cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio of the S&P 500 is at its 97th percentile relative to the last 130 years. In the bond market, a 1 percentage point increase in interest rates would lead to a decline of almost $1.2 trillion in the securities underlying the index. http://www.internetional.se/bondsnext.htm#17121tr

eftersom det mest sannolika scenariot är att svenska bostadspriser inte kommer att falla mer än tio procent. SvD 5 december 2017

Turning the ESM into an EU institution should in theory necessitate treaty change,  but the Commission has come up with a way around that requirement.  Article 352 of the EU Treaty, a kind of emergency clause, allows the Commission to grant itself competencies it might need. Spiegel Online 5 December 2017

With hindsight, we can identify the inflection point as July 5 this year when 10-year Treasuries closed at a rock bottom yield of 1.37 per cent. John Plender 5 December 2017 More by John Plender at IntCom

Martin Wolf selects his must-read titles FT 1 December 2017