The phrase on everyone’s lips at the moment is ‘Yield Curve’ – largely for its supposedly unerring ability to predict a recession if not, as its most extreme devotees seem to imply, actually to cause one. But is that a valid interpretation of what is afoot in financial markets and does that jibe with how […]
Category Archives: Austrian Theory
As a way of providing easy access to most of the regular work we have published over the past two years – and hence to getting a feel for what we do and how we do it – please see here for a collection in PDF form, offered in reverse chronological order.
MMT has recently enjoyed a sudden resurgence in popularity. but, like so many other systems which claim to reveal previously undiscovered truths, it turns out to be nothing more than a retread of a number of age-old fallacies, only appealing because it seems to promise the Provider State unlimited power to interfere in our lives. We discuss its failings here.
In his recent posting on Linked In, entitled, ‘The death of macro-prudential’, Stuart Trow of the EBRD delivered a well-aimed broadside at the pitiable conduct of the Bank of England and elaborated on some of the malign consequences of its catalogue of errors. Without wishing to single him out unduly for criticism for a piece […]
Have we finally reached the high-water mark of the current bull run? Is all the good news in – and the last, most shaky, marginal buyer along with it, inveigled in by the bounce from February’s brief Vol-au-Vent? If so, what are the implications? Where are the trigger points? How will any weakness manifest itself?
Previously featured by the good folk at Real Vision, my look at how the narrative we construct around the events of the market is all important in determining how we react to it and, hence, what further ramifications these might involve.
One of the prevailing stories which nervous market participants whisper to each other at bedtime involves the timely appearance of the Fairy God-mother, hastening to Earth from Tir Nan Og to launch another multi-trillion round of money-printing the instant that our over-inflated asset prices suffer any meaningful setback. This comforting narrative, however, presupposes three key […]
As the phenomenon which is Bitcoin continues its transition from the geek press, past the financial columns and onto the front-pages of the newspapers, a little sober reflection may be in order. Are its proponents’ claims justified when they tell us that, far from being yet another instance of the Madness of Crowds, it will […]
A theme which frequently pops up in current financial and economic commentary is that of the burgeoning levels of outstanding debt under which all too many nations are said to groan. Typically, reference will be made to the percentage of GDP which this mountain of obligations entails, usually by way of putting it into a context […]
Though the connexion is not always explicitly drawn, one obvious corollary of the perceived current shortfall in corporate investment spending is to be found in the lacklustre nature of the gains being recorded in something called ‘productivity’. This latter deficiency is often said to have ‘puzzled’ the Good and Great who presume to be able […]