Posted in Financial system on May 9th, 2010
Let’s look at the perspective .Quotes Pasted from <http://economistsview.typepad.com/ Duration of Unemployment Calculated Risk notes that the long-term unemployment problem isn’t going away anytime soon: But look at the reasons given. Duration of Unemployment, by CalculatedRisk: This graph shows the duration of unemployment as a percent of the civilian labor force. The [...]
Posted in Financial system on Apr 12th, 2010
GDP is the key measure, as the NBER committee notes in their business cycle dating procedure: via Calculated Risk. This leaves out unemployment, and restructuring to maintain the incomes of the upper middle while letting go of any intent to deal with the rest. The article goes on with some great graphs of all this. but
Posted in Financial system, essays on Apr 5th, 2010
People who criticize market forces I think are missing that it is corporations using markets through control that cause economic difficulties. The reason, I speculate is because they tend to be progressives who really like large scale organizational interventions, because their careers are there, and being critical of markets appears to take head on the [...]
Posted in Financial system on Apr 5th, 2010
Let’s look the core problem with our financial system isn’t the size of the largest financial institutions. It is, instead, the fact that the current system doesn’t limit risky behavior by “shadow banks,” institutions — like Lehman Brothers — that carry out banking functions, that are perfectly capable of creating a banking crisis, but, because [...]
Posted in Financial system on Apr 5th, 2010
But it has been around. Sorry I’ve missed it. Looks good, . Rortybomb Ah, another Roosevelt Institute person. He reviews 13 bankers, The book walks us backwards through time for a history of the United States’ relationship with banking, up and to the “rip the face off the customer” era of financial markets in which [...]
Posted in Daily notes, Financial system, world stuff on Apr 5th, 2010
*And so we have a Japanese restaurant with robot waiters. Net unemployment? The human value of contact with a real person? Probably quite high. *Reading last night on why science and democracy go together. This theme is important because science at its best contains an ethic of honesty and openness that is wonderful for [...]
Posted in Daily notes, Financial system, essays on Apr 3rd, 2010
After a description of an attempt to bring progress out of the current economic malaise, a reader writes, I don’t know about you, but when I see the words, “Toward a New Global Financial Architecture,” all the red lights on my dashboard start to flash. And when these words are coupled with the name of [...]
Posted in Financial system, alternative narratives. on Mar 15th, 2010
Good to read it all this is just an exccerpt. I;ve been interested in stories that people feel more compelling than global climate issues. Here is another such. let;s take a closer look at the European banking industry. The following is not pretty reading. I have rarely, if ever, felt this apprehensive about the outlook. [...]
Posted in Financial system on Mar 15th, 2010
I like it when the frame is extended. Brad DeLong ultimately nailed it in my opinion with the Electrical Revolution starting in 1850. Though he refers back to 1825 when the same problems seemed to occur, I do not think they were as nearly correlated in 1825. By 1850, the electrical revolution was on and [...]
Posted in Financial system on Mar 15th, 2010
a further quote in the article. As George Akerlof and I argue in our recent book Animal Spirits, the current financial crisis was driven by speculative bubbles in the housing market, the stock market, and energy and other commodities markets. Bubbles are caused by feedback loops: rising speculative prices encourage optimism, which encourages more buying, [...]