Insane Economics? Nomen est Omen?

Fullest employment potential reached with more immigration? How does that work Mr. Insana? So by inviting millions you boost 'growth', but per capital income is what counts!
Ron Insana: Tax reform is a great idea, but tax cuts just might be a waste of money

Steven Mnuchin: On the components for creating economic growth

Guess Inequality would not be high on his list of arguments?
Steven Mnuchin: On the components for creating economic growth

Population Growth - main Challenge to Future of Mankind

There may be some truth to it - Greece could probably grow out of its debt problem if population growth accelerates. But all-too-often analysts and commentators (and the politicians all over the world) see population growth as a positive. But stopping and reversing it would be the best way to stop environmental degradation!
Greeks Need To Start Having Babies Again Or Face Financial Oblivion

Don't blame Capitalism for Underinvestment

Massive increase in state spending over the past 40+ years - as measured in relation to GDP - has resulted in less disposable income, less saving and as a consequence less investment in most 'Western' economies. The greater part of state spending is earmarked for miscellaneous free goodies, so-called 'social' services that are nothing else than consumption.

ECB blabbering

"Taken together, the ECB's current policy settings are appropriate and are clearly providing the support required to sustain the recovery," Coeure said, adding that support will stay in place "until inflation is sustainably adjusting to our objective."
Well, Benoit Coeure - a signed-up member of the unelected Eurocracy ruling over us and stealing from all hard-working savers in the Eu(rozone) - utters another non-sensical and contradictory statement.
What does he mean by 'recovery'? it probably means economic GROWTH, but then he seems to indicate that inflation is 'their' objective? So would that mean inflation running at 2, 3 or more percent would be 'success', whatever the level of growth?

Crusade against Saving

Taking their cue from 'Saint Maynard' the political and economic 'Elites' that rule Western Societies wage a merciless war against Saving, and by implication against individuals that want to manage their own affairs responsibly. The ulterior motive may be to make people completely dependent on the Welfare states that countless bureaucrats are employed to administer.
Given that most economies sail along at a positive rate of growth - albeit not much above zero - and that inflation/deflation can safely be allowed to fluctuate around the zero mark (plus or minus 2 percent should not mean the end of the world by any stretch of the imagination ) it is not obvious why 'QE a outrance' should be on the policy menu at all.
Has a strange form of hysteria taken hold of Central Bankers and their camp followers in Media, Academia and Politics?
Why would it be morally acceptable to steal from savers and give to borrowers when - for thousands of years - saving was to be held in high esteem and spending/borrowing was to be discouraged?

Why is Europe rich, Africa poor?

There is a serious confusion between cause and effect in this post. The author blames Africa's poverty on the lack of 'regional and internationalist' institutions but forgets that Europe was prosperous long before these (IMF? OECD? EU?) were created.

Immigration aids Growth Fallacy

It is amazing that even seasoned Commentators fall for this fallacy. Economic growth has been relatively 'robust' in the UK in the past year (if you want to call growth in the low single digits that way). But to claim that this is partially due to an 'open door' immigration policy is disingenuous to say the least. Fact is that any economy will grow faster if the number of active workers increases. So the all-important measure of growth PER CAPITA is not growing by a similar amount. Sad thing is that the influential lobbies representing employers get too much of a hearing when they complain of labour 'shortages'. It is disgraceful that the overpaid bosses in large listed companies and these owned by 'Private' Equity - who dominate the discussion with easy access to gullible politicians and media - do so little to raise skill levels in order to achieve more output with a given pool of labour, i.e. by improving productivity. They prefer the easy route of importing cheap labour from countries that are at a completely different stage of economic development. But they care little about wage dumping as long as they live securely in their gated mansions or offshore tax havens.

What comes first - Supply or Demand?

Interesting controversy - is there a demand deficiency in Europe, and if so what can or should be done to boost demand? I tend to support Frank Shostak's argument that supply comes first. Demand is never 'sufficient' and we all have 'demands' that are larger than our incomes can support. Microeconomic arguments (The Baker producing bread in this case) are severely neglected by the economics and policy tribes - including the media commentators. Maybe Shostak's example is a bit simplistic and needs refining but I think he is on the right track. Just pumping money out of thin air (Martin Wolf, FT, The curse of weak demand) just papers over the cracks in the economy.

Economics for simple Minds - Unions are bad for Growth (Stelzer)

Economics is not an exact science, if it is a science at all. For that reason ideological prejudices are often hidden in simple statements such as this one: 'A Union revival that will hurt Growth' (Irwin Stelzer, The Weekly Standard). 
Unions may well have created all sort of economic and political havoc but before one makes the statement one should first check the facts: was economic growth really slower when union 'power' was higher? And what about the distribution of the growth? What is growth worth if only a very small minority benefits - today's equivalent of the Robber Barons and their hangers-on?

Growth at any Price no longer sustainable

The Economic and Media Commentariat is still wedded to the 'Growth at any Price' model. But there should be realisation that population growth as the major force behind GDP growth should be discounted and we should prepare for (at best) a static world population and realistically a drop in population. Naturally, the corporate world does not want this to happen, basically it operates on the principle 'apres nous le deluge', the investment community cheers it on on the chase for ever-higher sales, profits (and bonuses for the top dogs). I am far from being an enemy of the free markete/capitalist model but sometime the penny has to drop. Maybe focus should be more on making the model work in a more efficient way with the spoils distributed in a fairer way. Better schools and health care for all do not have to burden the environment.

Stock Buy-backs - Poison for the Economy?

There were times and places where companies were not allowed to buy their own shares. This was principally meant to prevent share price manipulation. But 'Modern' Financial Theory has induced company managements, investors and their hired guns in banks to make buy-backs an enormous (and largely unsupervised) activity. One is even left with the impression that share price manipulation has become the main focus of the top echelon of company managements. This should be no surprise as this narrow 'elite' benefits directly from a rising share price. Compensation schemes are also designed to make share speculation a one-way bet for these executives. Any drop in share prices is quickly 'compensated' by a fresh shower of (free) share options and re-priced 'long-term' incentive plans (strictly to the few at the top of course). No wonder that economic commentators wonder why companies do not invest and contribute to economic growth (let alone benefit the other 99.9 percent of the population). Apart from the economic and societal negative effect of unchecked share price manipulation these buy-backs not-too-rarely lead to outright value destruction as many transactions are conducted at price levels that later turn out to have been much too expensive (maybe even due to the fact that the market was expecting managements to perform the role of the 'greater fool', the sucker who buys at the top of the market).

Spontaneous Optimism is needed says Paul Ormerod

Interesting article (CityAM) but where is the 'spontaneous optimism' supposed to come from this time? And where has it sprung from in 1933?? All very well if Mr. Ormerod is "currently researching complexity, complex systems, nonlinear feedback, the boom and bust cycle of business and economic competition" but then we would expect that he could tell us the answer to this riddle.

OECD bureaucrats clueless

Reading that the bureaucrats in their cushy offices in Paris are 'pushing' for an increased 'firewall' to protect the Euro from disintegrating and help the Eurozone to return to economic growth one is reminded how clueless these 'experts' really are. They refuse to realise that the introduction of the Euro currency in its present form was a catastrophic error and think that throwing money at the economy is all that needs to be done to correct the cumulative results of 40 years of creeping socialism.

John Stuart Mill on the stationary state of the economy

Everything is still in thrall of the 'growth at any cost' philosophy. The astronomical salaries paid to 'Celebrities' and CEO's are counted as positive contributions to GDP and the qualitative aspects of Growth (better schools, better health care, better treatment of the environment) are neglected. Time to re-read Mill's prediction.

Population growth is number one economic issue says Paul Farrell (Marketwatch) and we fully agree.

Establishment Economists helpless

By suggesting nothing else but another 'Support Package' for Greece the establishment economists admit that they are helpless when faced with a crisis such as the one Greece (and and.....) is facing. If there is no other solution in today's economic toolkit than to throw ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer's and helicopter money at a problem we might as well bin the insights of 300 years of economic thought.

500 British Business Luminaries moan about 50pct tax rate

The arguments of these 500 pillars of the British Economy are laughable but also symptomatic of the feeble state of entrepreneurship that has been a factor for the relative (and absolute?) decline of British Business over the past 40-50 years. Would these businessmen really work less just to spite the government? Their income would decline even more if they would do so. Would they really cut employment or refrain from expanding the business if a good opportunity presents itself? As Warren Buffett argues over and over again, the economy in the US, for example, grew pretty fast in the 1950s and 1960s when top marginal tax rates were much higher.

Growth cannot solve all Economic Problems

Reading Roubini's view that Karl Marx may have made a valid point about Capitalism chimes with a neglected aspect of economic discourse (especially as practiced by commentators employed by financial service firms). Quite apart from the fact that from an environmental perspective growth - in the number of humans as well as in economic activity - has to end at some stage, even if not in the immediate future, the desperate clamor for growth at any cost is distracting from the fact that maybe the distribution of income and wealth may have a larger role to play in healing society's problems. What would a world of zero growth (at least in the industrial countries) look like? We would still generate a large amount of wealth year in year out. But maybe a shift in the relative pieces that different individuals take out of the given cake would make a more substantial contribution to increase the sum-total of human happiness than squeezing out an extra decimal point in GDP growth.