Tag Archives: Uncategorized

In the last few months I have gotten accused of racism a few times at this blog. I don’t think I am misrepresenting my accusers by stating that their claim is based primarily because of my views on a) immigration and b) the differences between the economic performance of different countries. The two issues actually collapse into one. I have stated repeatedly that I believe that culture is a key factor affecting the difference in economic outcomes (and many...

from David Ruccio Greece is a perfect example of how to turn a bad economic situation into something even worse. As Reuters reports,  Rescue funds from the European Union and International Monetary Fund saved Greece from bankruptcy, but the austerity and reform policies the lenders attached as conditions have helped to turn recession into a depression. As a result, the poverty rate in Greece almost doubled (between 2008 and 2015), rising from 11.2 percent to 22.2 percent. And average...

For nearly a half a century, from 1947 to 1996, real GDP and real Net Worth of Households and Non-profit Organizations (in 2009 dollars) both increased at a compound annual rate of a bit over 3.5%. GDP growth, in fact, was just a smidgen faster — 0.016% — than  growth of Net Household Worth. From 1996 to 2015, GDP grew at a compound annual rate of 2.3% while Net Worth increased at the rate of 3.6%. Responding to an editorial in the New York Times, Jared...

Down again, and these are seasonally adjusted: Highlights Purchase applications for home mortgages fell a seasonally adjusted 3 percent in the February 17 week, while refinancing applications decreased by 1 percent to the lowest level since January. Unadjusted, the purchase index rose 2 percent from the prior week and was up 10 percent from the year ago week, which included the President’s Day holiday. The refinancing share of mortgage activity continued to decline and was...

from Lars Syll A couple of years ago yours truly had a discussion with the chairman of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences (yes, the one that yearly presents the winners of The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel). What started the discussion was the allegation that the level of employment in the long run is a result of people’s own rational intertemporal choices and that how much people work basically is a question of incentives. Somehow the argument...

from Norbert Häring Microsoft’s Bill Gates is one of the richest and most influential people on earth. He announced in 2015 that his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was aiming at achieving full digitalization of the payment systems of India and other populous developing countries by 2018. This “financial inclusion” program for India dates back to well before Narendra Modi came to power. It was elevated to official US policy by Executive Order in 2012, because the President saw vital...

“Our major competitor is cash. Cash is what we seek to eliminate” Recently, the Indian government overnight abolished most cash. With dire consequences. What are the economic consequences, why did the Indian government do this? Economies like those of India have, for a bunch of reasons, often relatively high rates of inflation. After the abolishing of cash, India suddenly experienced ‘ugly’ deflation (‘ugly’ i.e. provoked by a fall in demand as well as contributing to this fall in...

Trumped up expectations cooling a bit?PMI Manufacturing Index Flash Services: Initial earnings estimates have tended to fall: This is extraordinary, as their liabilities are most likely predominately euro denominated, which is what I’d call a ‘fundamental short’ position. That is, this has been part of the ‘portfolio shifting’ that has been keeping the euro down: Source: http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-ecb-eurozone-investment-idUKKBN15Z1GE Reserves capable of being...

from Maria Alejandra Madi By 2020, the largest pools of pension fund assets are projected to remain concentrated in the US and Europe. In North America, pension fund assets reached $19.3 trillion in 2012 and PwC estimates that by 2020, pension fund assets will rise by 5.7 percent a year to achieve over $30 trillion of the $56.5 trillion in total global assets, more than 50 percent of the global total. Indeed, according to the PwC report, Asset Management 2020: A Brave New World,...