Wed 2010-09-15 13:55 EDT

billy blog >> Blog Archive >> Export-led growth strategies will fail

Bill Mitchell

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) released their annual Trade and Development Report, 2010 yesterday (September 14, 2010). The 204 page report which I have been wading through today is full of interesting analysis and will take several blogs over the coming weeks to fully cover. The message is very clear. Export-led growth strategies are deeply flawed and austerity programs will worsen growth and increase poverty. UNCTAD consider a fundamental rethink has to occur where policy is reoriented towards domestic demand and employment creation. They consider an expansion of fiscal policy to be essential in the current economic climate as the threat of a wide-spread double dip recession increases. The Report is essential reading...

Billy Blog; blogs Archive; Export-led growth strategies; fail.

Tue 2010-08-03 15:02 EDT

Economics of Contempt: Anatomy of Lehman's Failure, and the Importance of Liquidity Requirements

Remember the Lehman Examiner's Report? The 4000+ page report by the court-appointed examiner was lauded for a couple of weeks after it was released, and then largely forgotten. The media and blogosphere quickly moved on to the next outrage-du-jour...Well, I did not forget about it, and thanks to the uptick in flights -- and thus reading time -- in the last few months, I can now credibly claim to have read....well, not every single word in the Examiner's Report (some appendices are just pages of CUSIPs), but all of the substantive sections...Anton Valukas and the lawyers at Jenner & Block who wrote the Examiner's Report did a masterful job. I was, and continue to be, in awe of the quality and comprehensiveness of the report...think I have a pretty good handle on what went wrong at Lehman, and why it failed...they were misrepresenting their liquidity pool. In a huge way...the brazenness of their misrepresentation was shocking...Including the clearing-bank collateral in its liquidity pool was not only inappropriate, but also aggressively deceptive...Lehman was also including in its liquidity pool non-central bank eligible CLOs and CDOs. And they had the audacity to mark these CLOs and CDOs at 100 (par) for purposes of the liquidity pool, even though JPMorgan's third-party pricing vendor marked them at 50--60...

Anatomy; contempt; economic; important; Lehman's failure; liquidity requirements.

New Economic Perspectives Tue 2010-08-03 14:12 EDT

The CBO's Misplaced Fear of a Looming Fiscal Crisis

Eric Tymoigne

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just released an 8-page brief titled "Federal Debt and the Risk of a Fiscal Crisis." In it you will find all the traditional arguments regarding government deficits and debt: "unsustainability," "crowding out", bond rates rising to "unaffordable" levels because of fears that the Treasury would default or "monetize the debt," the need to raise taxes to pay for interest servicing and government spending, the need "to restore investor's confidence" by cutting government spending and raising taxes. This gives us an opportunity to go over those issues one more time...

CBO's Misplaced Fear; looming fiscal crisis; New Economic Perspectives.

Wed 2010-05-19 11:39 EDT

The Job Guarantee Program

CofFEE - Centre of Full Employment and Equity

The Centre of Full Employment and Equity has developed a sustainable path to full employment, which it calls the Job Guarantee program. A major focus of our work is on articulating this program - explaining how it works, the urgency of it, and the reasons why it is the only way to achieve full employment with price stability, a combination that has evaded most economies in the last 25 years. This is the Job Guarantee program resource page and you can read all about the solution to unemployment in the documents contained here...

Job Guarantee Program.

zero hedge Thu 2010-05-13 17:50 EDT

Willem Buiter Issues His Most Dire Prediction Yet: Sees "Unprecedented" Fiscal Crises, US Debt Inflation And Fed Monetization

...we were very surprised when we read Willem Buiter's latest Global Economic View (recall that he works for Citi now). In it the strategist for the firm that defines the core of the establishment could not be more bearish. In fact, at first we thought that David Rosenberg had ghost written this...Buiter presents a game theory type analysis, which concludes that the US and other sovereigns will soon be forced into fiscal austerity. Among his critical observations (we recommend a careful read of the entire 68 pages), are that the US is highly polarized, and that the Fed, which is "the least independent of leading central banks" would be willing to implement "inflationary monetisation of public debt and deficits than other central banks." The next step of course would be hyperinflation. And Buiter sees America as the one country the most likely to follow this route. Most troublingly, Buiter predicts that a massive crisis is the only thing that can break the political gridlock in the US in order to fix the broken US fiscal situation...

debt inflated; dire predictions; Fed Monetizing; fiscal crises; see; unprecedented; Willem Buiter Issues; Zero Hedge.

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis Wed 2010-04-21 12:11 EDT

Geithner and the NY Fed Accused of Willfully Ignoring Fraud and Covering Up Lehman's Bad Assets by Senior Regulator During the S&L Crisis

Michael Shedlock

Inquiring minds are digging into a 27 page statement made by William Black before the Financial Services committee. Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law, at the University of Missouri...[According to Black,] Lehman's underlying problem that doomed it was that it was insolvent because it made so many bad loans and investments. It hid its insolvency through the traditional means -- it refused to recognize its losses honestly...The FRBNY knew that Lehman was engaged in fraud designed to overstate its liquidity and, therefore, was unwilling to loan as much money to Lehman. The FRBNY did not, however, inform the SEC, the public, or the OTS (which regulated an S&L that Lehman owned) of the fraud...The relevant issue was never: can Lehman be saved? The relevant issue, one that the SEC and the Fed appear never to have even asked, was: how can we stop Lehman from serving as a vector spreading the epidemic of liar's loans? They should have asked themselves that question -- and acted -- no later than 2001.

Cover; Geithner; L Crisis; Lehman's Bad Assets; Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis; NY Fed Accused; s; senior regulators; Willfully Ignoring Fraud.

Fri 2010-04-02 10:36 EDT

Archein: Krugman as Failure

...I'd like to direct you to a scathing, sniveling little review, Krugman wrote fifteen years ago on Bill Greider's most excellent "One World Ready or Not". Greider's book documents the ravaging of the American middle-class caused by the processes of corporate globalization. Krugman counters with a ludicrous little tale about hot dogs, and then proceeds to defend it pushing all the pop-economic theory of the day, by so doing, an economist was bestowed with money and pats on the head from the mega-corporate boardrooms, you know, like the money Paul was paid working for Enron. According to the Nobel Laureate, replacing good paying steel jobs with McDonald's jobs was just great. Now today, fifteen years later, Mr. Krugman's contradicting what he's been saying his entire career, while Greider, no back page of the NYT for him, was right along...Mr. Krugman represents the most serious problem this republic currently faces, power has lost all accountability. From the top of government, to media, to finance, to our large corporations, we've seen spectacular failure, and no one held accountable. It's a lot bigger problem than the fact Paul Krugman is really a very silly man.

Archein; failure; Krugman.

Taibblog Thu 2010-01-07 18:20 EST

Fannie, Freddie, and the New Red and Blue

Matt Taibbi

...what we've learned in the last few years as one scandal after another spilled onto the front pages is that the bubble economies of the last two decades were not merely monstrous Ponzi schemes that destroyed trillions in wealth while making a small handful of people rich. They were also a profound expression of the fundamentally criminal nature of our political system, in which state power/largess and the private pursuit of (mostly short-term) profit were brilliantly fused in a kind of ongoing theft scheme that sought to instant-cannibalize all the wealth America had stored up during its postwar glory, in the process keeping politicians in office and bankers in beach homes while continually moving the increasingly inevitable disaster to the future.

blue; Fannie; Freddie; New red; Taibblog.

naked capitalism Sun 2009-11-29 12:27 EST

The Kanjorski Amendment Trojan Horse and Prompt Corrective Action

Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns

...On page 7 of the Kanjorski Amendment, there is an enormous loophole that virtually eliminates the ability of regulators to take prompt corrective action in seizing and shutting down a bankrupt financial institution...

Kanjorski Amendment Trojan Horse; naked capitalism; Prompt Corrective Action.

The Economic Populist - Speak Your Mind 2 Cents at a Time Wed 2009-11-25 11:23 EST

Societe Generale - How to Prepare Yourself for a Global Economic Collapse

Commodities Bugs are ecstatic with the French firm Societe Generale's Worst Case Debt Scenario Report...On the first page you will see as the number one thing to do to project yourself: Sell your dollars

economic populist; global economic collapse; Mind 2 Cents; prepared; Societe generally; speaking; Time.

Bruce Krasting Fri 2009-09-04 18:31 EDT

Fannie Has .9 Trillion in Troubled Loans - 8K

Bruce Krasting

Fannie Mae's 8k has an interesting slide. It is a look at their questionable assets. The slide is not easy to read. It can be found in the 2009 Second Quarter Supplement, on page 5. The report describes FNM's exposure to problematic classes of mortgages on their book. That total comes to a whopping .9 Trillion. The total book of business is $2.7 Trillion, fully 32% of their book is troubled.

8k; 9 trillion; Bruce Krasting; Fannie; troubled loans.

naked capitalism Tue 2009-09-01 19:06 EDT

More Bogus Bailout Reporting: ``As Big Banks Repay Bailout Money, U.S. Sees a Profit''

Clearly, the spin is in...The fact that we have such patent garbage running as a front page New York Times story says either the reporter and his editors lack the ability to think critically (or find sources who could do that for them) or that we have a controlled press. Bogus NYT reporting.

Big Banks Repay Bailout Money; Bogus Bailout Reporting; naked capitalism; profits; U.S. Sees.

Fri 2008-11-07 00:00 EST

naked capitalism: A Page From Japan's Playbook? Bernanke Proposes "Floor" Under MBS Market

Bernanke proposed; floor; Japan's Playbook; MBS Market; naked capitalism; page.

Thu 2007-11-15 00:00 EST

PRINT THIS | Page Not Found

Money market funds at risk? Bank of America plans a $600 million cushion, by John Waggoner (USA Today); "breaking the buck"

Found; page; print.

Tue 2003-04-29 00:00 EDT

li_linux.htm . Page consacree aux logiciels SUNCLOCK et XRMAP

xrmap -- X client for generating maps of the Earth and manipulating the CIA World data bank

htm; li_linux; Page consacree aux logiciels SUNCLOCK; XRMAP.

Mon 2001-04-23 00:00 EDT

Karin - Open Source Automatic Commercial Deletion

karin home page [from Karin -- detect and delete commercials in captured video]

Karine; Open Source Automatic Commercial Deletion.