This essay attempts a review of the economics – and the prevailing economic thinking – which have brought us to our present pass of high-leverage and heavy debt-dependence. It helps set the backdrop for an in-depth look at markets which will follow shortly…
Tag Archives: yields
[This is the first of a series of short bulletins called, ‘The Course of the Exchange’, in memory of John Castaing’s widely-read updates, posted in Jonathan’s Coffee House in Change Alley, 300 years ago]
With the latest CBO estimates for the US Federal budget for August just in, we are again in a position to take stock of the scale of the burden which the COVID-19 lockdowns and more general restrictions have imposed upon the nation’s finances. It does not make for happy reading.
The poster girl of the voguish crankdom that is Modern Monetary Theory (“MMT”) – Stephanie Kelton, has been out pimping her new book – “The Deficit Myth” – with a great deal of help from the unofficial PR department which she seems to have, nestled within the House Organ of Davos, the execrable FT.
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 […]
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 […]
A little over 10 years ago, a hitherto obscure German institution called IKB – majority-owned by an arm of the German government – suddenly made headlines around the world. On the last day of July 2007, a company which ironically had its origins in a foredoomed effort to ‘stimulate’ the German economy in the aftermath […]
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.