Tag Archives: Money

Saturn Devours His Children

by CantillonCH

A recent Wall St Journal article gave vent to a scare-story full of Underconsumptionist claptrap, carried under the catchy headline: “The Coronavirus Savings Glut”. Ironically, and only a day later, the paper ran a second piece entitled “How Coronavirus Upended a Trillion-Dollar Corporate Borrowing Binge and Kicked Off a Wave of Bankruptcies”.

Huh? Does the Journal think we have too many savings or too few? Who can say? The only thing that is clear is that editorial consistency comes a distant second to clickbait and column inches.

Meanwhile, politicians everywhere have been urging those they have at last let out of Lockdown to get out and ‘spend’ as a means of speeding the recovery. Nor have the various banks’ Talking Heads been slow to chime in with predictably supportive exhortations for their various home governments to adopt policies aimed at ‘driving demand’.

[A version of this article is also available as a PODCAST] Continue reading …

Whatever it doesn’t take

by CantillonCH

On March 15th, the Eurozone branch of the Throw-more-money-at-it lobby were making themselves heard, calling for the ECB to run the printing presses for a limited (author pulls down lower eyelid with index finger) period as a supplement to the to the €120 billion in extra security purchases already made to that point. [NB total ‘assistance’ to April 17th had reached to €275bln in RP, €148bln in securities, and €126bln in FX swaps for a total of €550bln in five short weeks].We responded:-

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M4 Compendium (updated)

by CantillonCH

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. Continue reading …

MMT: The Court Astrologer’s Dream

by CantillonCH

It’s not Modern; it’s not Monetary; and it’s really not much of a Theory

If ever there was a prime example of a belief in the Fairy Gov-a-Mother being mixed with a bad case of warmed-over monetary crankdom, the suddenly, newly- fashionable doctrine which masquerades under the portentous-sounding name of ‘Modern Monetary Theory’ – ‘MMT’, for short – must surely qualify.

For a shortened version of this as a podcast, go to: Soundcloud Apple Podcasts under ‘Cantillon Effects’ or TuneIn at:- https://bit.ly/2CXfEpy

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Cryptomania

by CantillonCH

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 soon replace all our existing monies and supplant our present ways of doing business? And, if they are right, will that redound either to their benefit or to ours, or to a different set of actors entirely?

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Here we go again…

by CantillonCH

As world stock markets have continued to climb to cyclical – if not all-time – highs, it has become almost the norm for industry Talking Heads to season their smatterings of media insight with a brief, talismanic expression of scepticism, uttered partly to appease the ever-jealous God of the Markets but mainly so as to be on record as ‘having foreseen the crash’ as and when one eventually occurs.

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China: Turn of the Tide?

by CantillonCH

In an earlier Monitor, we alluded to a possible monetary reason for suspecting that the past year’s spectacular (and inflationary) bounce in Chinese revenues and earnings might have reached its high-water mark.

Here we take a more detailed look at the situation in the Middle Kingdom:-

17-08-21 China

The Fed’s Non-Barking Dogs

by CantillonCH

[This article appeared in slightly abridged form in the Epoch Times under the title, ‘The Fed’s Quantitative Tightening‘]

The older a bull market gets, those who are paid to comment on it become more and more desperate for new things to say about it – a professionally pressing need which tends to split the pundits into two distinct camps, each equally one-eyed about whether prospects are good or bad.

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Fretting on the Fed: Monitor No.5

by CantillonCH

Falling returns in the US. Tight money in China. An upswing in Japan. Deflation in India. Gold goes cold. Fretting the Fed on falling CPI and a flattening curve? No need to panic, just yet.

Please click for the latest Monitor.

17-06-20 M4 No5