In order to give some context to the disparities which so bedevil relations between countries in the Eurozone, one thing we can consider is the tally of net private indebtedness to banks (i.e., the sum of household and private, non-financial corporation loan balances less their deposits). To make these truly comparable, we take into account both the size of the population (ranging from Germany’s 80-odd million to Ireland’s 4 1/2) and also Eurostat’s estimate of median household income. We also take the opportunity to widen out the snapshot so as to include the Eurozone’s Scandinavian fellow-travellers in Sweden and Denmark.
Category Archives: Money
Timeo Danaos (et Romanos)
It is now largely overlooked, but the 19th century had its own precursor to EMU in the shape of the Latin Monetary Union, set up principally to try to solve the hoary problems of silver:gold bimetallism. But, if much of the Union’s history was dogged by the narrow technical issues of how, firstly, to structure its members’ own monetary system and, thereafter, to align it more closely with those of the non-members, there were other features, too, which are still very much germane today.
Unrealistic expectations, short-term politics, and – as ever – too much debt plagued both Greece and Italy in those days, too, with repercussions for the other LMU members as well as for their trading partners in the wider world.
[The following appears as Chapter II in my book ‘Santayana’s Curse’ available on Kindle]
When Every Problem is a Nail
It is increasingly hard not to fulminate at the latter day lunacy of blind CPI targeting. It seems hard to imagine that, 25 years ago, the brave little RBNZ was breaking new ground by adopting the goal of keeping price rises to 0-2% p.a. in order both to provide an anchor for its own broader policy aims and, believe it or not, as a way for it and the government of the day to wean the wider public sector off the levels of increasingly obstructive interventionism which had long been its practice to undertake.
ECB Excesses
With last week’s report of monetary developments in the Eurozone, we again have evidence both of Draghi’s monetary monomania and of the sheer futility of his constant refrain that the ECB is just buying time until member states undertake the ever-promised, but never-delivered ‘structural reforms’ which they all so patently require.
Bill White & True Sinews: In-Depth Part II
Please find the concluding part of our discussion where, among other topics, we touch upon the arbitrary and even capricious nature of the policy goals we are pursuing at such cost in the attempt to shore up what Bill disparagingly calls the ‘Non-System’.
Bill White & True Sinews: In Depth Part I
Please find here the first part of the lengthy discussion – organized by the Cobden Centre with kind assistance from Hinde Capital – which we held in March with William White, that most distinguished elder statesmen of finance and one of the few to really understand that if we are ever to find the right answers to the problems confronting us, we must at least be prepared to ask difficult questions. Part II will be posted shortly.
Monday Morning Macro
Though the punditocracy has become much more aware of the sheer scale of China’s equity bubble in recent weeks, it is still arguably the case that reality is running ahead of reportage even as more and more evidence emerges of just how dire things are in the world beyond the brokerage screens.
The Ghost of ’37
With the Fed supposedly steeling itself at last to remove a little of its emergency ‘accommodation’, it has suddenly become fashionable to warn of the awful parallels with 1937, as the highly-respected Ray Dalio of Bridgewater has notably done.
That year, the story goes, the nation’s ascent from the depths of the Great Depression was aborted because the Fed ‘tightened’ and the government ‘cut spending’: a sharp recession was the immediate and highly avoidable result. Therefore, we are told, we must not act today.
We strongly refute the analogy: Fed actions were marginal and largely technical in nature while the real fiscal story was the rise in taxes, not any slashing of regular outlays
Global M
As part of our analytical process, we frequently consult our proprietary estimate of global money supply, something we construct by combining the individual measures for 15 countries (strictly 33, since we include the euro as one of them) which together account for almost three-quarters of global output.
Money, Money, Money
As the title of the blog suggests, we pay close attention to developments in money and credit since the twin precepts of our outlook are that ‘the credit cycle IS the business cycle’ and that ‘silver [i.e., money] is the true sinews of the circulation’.
It is all very well for both macro-economists and stock-pickers to look at flows, but unless a weather eye is kept on how they are being financed and what that implies for the future vulnerabilities of the contracting parties, a very important element is being overlooked.