Rising inequality – fundamental changes required

I am currently working in Sri Lanka at a very interesting time in the nation’s history. Ten days ago the nation elected a new president and ousted the bevy of officials that had been linked to the previous, rather dictatorial and seemingly corrupt regime, that had held a iron grip on power for years. The daily newspapers in Colombo each day are now devoting multiple pages to discoveries that are coming to light about the ways of the previous regime. Some previous officials have had their passports confiscated amid rumours of other politicians and their families making quick getaways to Middle Eastern nations to avoid prosecution. Arrests are being made to roundup the corrupt former government officials. The editorial this morning said that the past government had allowed “a certain person, who was accused of corruption amounting to billions of rupees, to leave the country soon after the presidential election results were announced”. I guess everyone knows who Mr Certain Person is. There was a cute report about the discovery of a ‘double cab’ (truck) which had gone missing from the Presidential secretariat’s car pool being found hidden in a saw mill. What you find in the poorer nations is that the corruption is fairly transparent and crude in its implementation and is often enforced by a martial regime. In the more advanced nations, the corruption is more subtle and harder to detect. Oxfam’s latest report (January 19, 2015) – Wealth: Having It All and Wanting More – considers the manifestations of this corruption and its pervasive nature.

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SNB decision tells us that the crisis is entering a new phase

Switzerland – homeof the secret bank vaults, which house treasures stolen from people (particularly the Jewish victims) by the Nazis during WW2 and ill-gotten cash by capitalists who wish to evade scrutiny of prudential and tax authorities of their domiciled nations. Now it is the canary, which has just sung to tell us that all the hubris about Eurozone recovery cannot cover up the reality that the crisis is not yet over and requires root and branch reform to the policy ideology that exposes the floored design of the monetary union. The – Decision – last week (January 15, 2015) by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to both break the peg of the Swiss franc to the euro and cut its interest rate on sight deposits to -0.75 per cent signals the surrender by that nation to the reality surrounding its borders. The interest rate decision was required after it decided to scrap the exchange rate peg, given that it didn’t want a credit crunch killing the domestic economy. The appreciation of the exchange rate, which has been held artificially low by the peg, will already undermine domestic spending. The SNB said its decision as reversing its previous “exceptional and temporary measure”, which “protected the Swiss economy from serious harm” as the exchange rate became overvalued. But the decision itself was rather extraordinary given it was seemingly so surprising for most and central bankers are meant to be cautious types.

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Saturday Quiz – January 17, 2015 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you work out why you missed a question or three! If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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Friday lay day – more snake oil from Brussels

Its my Friday lay day blog. I am in Sri Lanka at present and will have some reports about that over the next 14 odd days. I was amazed overnight by the comments from IMF boss Lagarde who made overt political statements in an upcoming election year by claiming that David Cameron had shown “eloquent and convincing” leadership in the global recovery. She said they were a model for the European Union. When asked why the IMF had criticised Britain in 2012 for “playing with fire” by invoking fiscal austerity, she said the IMF had “got it wrong” (Source). Hmm. No recognition that Britain cannot be a model for most of the EU nations, given the latter surrendered their currency sovereignty, imposed fiscal rules that prevent growth, and have a central bank that will not act as a responsible currency issuer. Further, it was a false admission of failure. In fact, the IMF got it right and Britain didn’t implement the austerity that it had initially planned and has kept a relative large fiscal deficit that has helped support growth.

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Australian labour market – moderate growth recorded

Today’s release of the – Labour Force data – for December 2014 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that the Australian labour market modestly in the month of December. The good news is that full-time employment growth was positive and the participation rate rose, and unemployment fell. The bad news is that employment remains below the underlying growth in the labour force and the bias is thus towards higher unemployment. Monthly working hours fell this month, which was curious given the predominant full-time employment growth. But monthly data is volatile and the trends are still fairly poor. Remember that last month, the broad ABS labour underutilisation rate – the sum of unemployment and underemployment – was estimated to be at 15 per cent. That is a crisis. So a month’s growth in December is good but needs to be kept in context. The teenage labour market went backwards again this month, which signals an urgent policy problem that the Federal government refuses to recognise or deal with. They are so obsessed with cutting fiscal deficits that they cannot see the future damage they are causing as a result of the appalling state of the youth labour market.

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Who are the British that are living within their means?

The British Prime Minister gave a New Year’s speech in Nottingham on Monday (January 12, 2015), where he railed about the “dangers of debts and deficits” as part of the buildup to this year’s national election in Britain. There does not appear to be an official transcript available yet so I am relying on Notes that the Government released to the press containing extracts (Source). However, it is clear that the framing used by the British Prime Minister was seeking to personalise (bring down to the household level) public fiscal aggregates and invoke fear among the ignorant. The classic approach. There was no economic credibility to the Prime Minister’s claims. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a politically effective speech. So woeful was the response by the Opposition that it suggested Cameron’s speech was very effective. That is the state of things. Lies, myths and exaggeration wins elections.

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US labour market – improving but warning signs still present

Last week (January 9, 2015), the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released the – Employment Situation – for December 2014. The data showed that “Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 252,000 in December, and the unemployment rate declined by 0.2 percentage point to 5.6 percent”, which suggests the US recovery is on-going. However, the participation rate continued to decline and the employment-population ratio has not showed much sign of recovery. There are two other ways of looking at the labour market, which are typically neglected by the mainstream press analysis, but which provide very useful information about the direction of the labour market. I updated my gross flows database today and also the job openings and quits database. I will consider the latter next week, but today the question is whether workers have a higher probability of gaining a job in the US now than in the recent past.

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While Europe debates a placebo the disaster deepens

The youth are our future. The future is for our youth. Poverty used to be a problem of the aged as they left employment and entered retirement. Shorter life spans than now meant it was a relatively short-lived but deplorable state for people to end in. All that has changed. The youth are still our future but there is a much diminished future for them. Poverty risks and burdens have also shifted from the older members of the population to the younger members. From the retired to the jobless and casualised worker. And we get angry when young people get lured away by what they see as attractive, hope-filled futures, that may or may involve remaining alive in the here and now, and wield guns and bombs. Yet the policies we support close the door on any future that might be more acceptable to the rest of us. Neo-liberalism is creating a ticking bomb. The GFC was just the first act. Societies around the advanced world are undermining their own longevity as they accept that fiscal austerity is the only alternative. To what?

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Saturday Quiz – January 10, 2015 – answers and discussion

Here are the answers with discussion for yesterday’s quiz. The information provided should help you understand the reasoning behind the answers. If you haven’t already done the Quiz from yesterday then have a go at it before you read the answers. I hope this helps you develop an understanding of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and its application to macroeconomic thinking. Comments as usual welcome, especially if I have made an error.

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