SUMMARY: Thanks to the election of President Trump and to his uncompromising attitude to the establishment media, much hot air is being expended on the subject of ‘fake news’. What we should really be getting worked up about is ‘fake economics’, for this is a much more pervasive evil, as well as a much more […]
Category Archives: Macro
At the start of the year it has become wearily traditional for us pundits to offer one of two genres of prediction. The first takes the form of a genuine—if ultimately foredoomed—attempt to lift a ragged corner of those thick shrouds of unknowability which separate today from tomorrow. The second combines such futility with a […]
Reuters’ story that SAFE told its banks they should be as obstructive as possible in meeting customer demands for foreign currency, but should absolute not divulge the reason why, certainly succeeded in causing a stir in markets.
Amid the relative torpor of the US holiday, it might be the moment to wax a little philosophical and ask if you, the listener, have ever noticed that so much of what passes for economic wisdom today involves the persistent overuse of the word ‘uncertainty’?
In the week in which PM Theresa May appeared before the annual shindig of the UK’s most visible Big Business lobby group, the CBI, it was perhaps fortuitous that both her crew and theirs released their latest statements of account.
As what will be an interval greatly shortened by the Thanksgiving Day holiday dawns, traders and investors seem happy to continue where they left off on Friday, buying stocks, selling currencies, and giving bonds a fairly wide berth. A little respite would not be entirely unwelcome after a period in which we have experienced record […]
Having just managed to quell a dangerous rebellion among her fellow Committee members, it did not seem the most opportune time for Janet Yellen to start dreaming of the sort of post-war ‘demand management’ that would happily trade a few extra percentage points of price inflation in order to move a little further up the […]
There are those who can display a solid grasp of the oft–misunderstood mechanics of credit and money generation by banks and who are also well aware of the episodes of endemic mistakes this entrains in in our system. Yet, perhaps because they possess a certain ideological bent, many such commentators cannot seem to steel themselves […]
For those who will not take my word for it that banks do create deposits by lending money, let me quote you a little Roepke from a footnote (p113) to his 1936 work, ‘Crises & Cycles’: “The process [of credit creation] is now clearly explained in any text-book on economics, banking or money (especially recommendable […]
Pride of place for political news outside the US must go to the UK High Court’s decision that the infamous Article 50 clause by which Brexit is to be achieved cannot take place without being subject to Parliamentary approval.