Janet Yellen: Micromanagement taken to extreme

Maybe the next step is - weekly data and adjusting Fed action accordingly? O tempora! where has intellectual honesty gone?
Janet Yellen says economic data hasn't notably strengthened - Business Insider

Currency Union CAN work without Fiscal Union

Academics, assorted Analysts and Media Commentators regurgitate ad nauseam that Currency Union without Fiscal Union cannot work. Sorry but repeating this does not make it a truth. Admittedly a Fiscal Union would make things easier but the Euro-zone could function quite well without establishing a (technocratic) Super-Government far removed from any democratic control.
The Gold Standard - and the post-Bretton Wood system of fixed exchange rates - worked quite well without Fiscal Union. All it took was discipline on the part of the participating governments. This is what is missing - in most aspects of policy making - these days. The Currency Union is doomed if the member states do not adjust their internal economic and fiscal policies and disregard market signals.
Excessive speculation - magnified by leverage and uncontrolled capital flows - pose a risk as they turbo-charge price signals (falling sovereign bond prices in particular). This is akin to some panicky bodies in a small rowing boat. But decisive changes to policy measures should be able bring markets under control - fiscal adjustment, penal interest rates should quickly give the markets the right signal.
Do not blame lack of Fiscal Union for the problems of the Euro-zone. These have been left to accumulate in a reckless fashion over many years if not decades. Introducing Fiscal Union may douse the smoldering fire - for a while. But if there is no proper fundamental adjustment - remember the Mezzogiorno - patience in some member states that are paying high transfers will run out. In addition even bigger waves of speculation will set in when Fiscal Union looks frayed, funds will pour into the stronger member states until the pressure point is reached and the Currency Union can no longer be maintained. George Soros would relish this Mega-Tsunami if he would still be around at that time.

The European Central Bank’s House of Cards

"Europe is a runaway train with a certain crash in its future." (Frank Hollenbeck, Mises Daily)

Bank of England clueless - 'QE does not create asset bubble'

One has to wonder where else all the freshly printed money has disappeared to. It does not seem to go into more bank lending, so where has it gone? Would be interesting to know what level property and share prices - not to mention interest rates - would be without this unprecedented flood of money. May God protect us from civil service economists at the Central Banks - and the international bodies such as the OECD and the IMF.

Inflation: Chicken or Egg?

The argument that "there is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency" (J M Keynes, 1921) may well be true. But it still makes one wonder what comes first: the dysfunction of society or the destruction of money. These days one could argue that in a lot of countries it is a mal-functioning political system that leads to desperate measures like Quantitative Easing as cooked up by the Frankenstein economists running the Fed, Bank of England, ECB and Bank of Japan. See also Dylan Grice

Nominal GDP Targeting - Witches Brew

The absurdity of this 'policy' that is the latest mantra propagated by the political and economic policy establishment should be clear at first sight: if an economy is dead in the water all that will happen if any nominal level of GDP is targeted is that the level of inflation is pumped up. No one seems to be interested in explaining why this should have any meaningful - or permanent - influence on real economic activity

Bernanke & Co: Hero or Villain?

It is absurd that a professor of economics - who should know better - has no other solution to offer for the lack of growth in the world's major economy. Apart from the question whether or not eternal growth is really feasible - or desirable - he would only have to look a closer look at the relevant textbooks and he would find that pumping freshly printed dollar bills into the financial system is not the only (temporary and superficial) answer to what is in essence a question of fiscal indiscipline and wrong micro-economic measures.

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.

Monetary Policy close to lunacy

Recently some prominent and not so prominent economists have suggested that the Fed should target nominal GDP growth when setting its policy. The only thing these wise analysts have forgotten to mention is the question of how to make sure that not all - or even the majority - in nominal GDP growth will be accounted for by price inflation.

Fed Stimulus - the wrong medicine

When economists from the pulpit of their tenured positions complain (Stimulus by Fed Is Disappointing, Economists Say, New York Times, 24 April 2011) that the policy of Quantitative Easing (aka Money Printing) has not been sufficiently forceful I would like to remind them that the policy was wrong right from the beginning. The Keynesian policies of macro economic management - pushing buttons in fiscal or monetary aggregates - give politicians and all those arguing for a powerful state tools to play with but they are not the only - or even correct - reply to problems that stem for wrong micro-economic policies in tax, employment or international trade management.

QE: Miracle Cure or Con Job?

Just finished re-reading Mackay's classic on the Madness of Crowds. So this topic is of timely interest to me. The academic - and to a lesser extent political and media - debate for and against quantitative easing rages: but while I am not able to devote as much time and intellectual firepower (?) to this subject as the deep thinkers who offer their wisdom on the subject as I have to pursue a day-job as well , I would just like to observe that until this recent attack of collective madness anyone suggesting the use of helicopter money as a means to combat economic problems would have been considered to be NUTS! If this social experiment is successful it surely opens the door to end the 'economic problem' for good. Alternatively it will go into the history books as the greatest Ponzi scheme and con trick ever, on a par with the South Sea Bubble, with Ben Shalom Bernanke in the role of John Law.

Quantitative Easing - Economics of the Stone Age

There is no way one can say something nice about the growing consensus among the 'experts' that QE (Quantitative Easing) is the only solution to the lacklustre growth experienced in many 'Western' economies. The momentum behind this consensus originated in the Anglo-Saxon economies, the US and the UK, and these two countries are so far the leading practitioners of this dubious strategy to solve their real or perceived economic problems. (see Fed mulls new bond approach) The curious aspect is that growth is not even negative in the United States and Britain. But it seems that it is just not large 'enough' to satisfy the never-ending aspirations of the politicians for more growth. For decades now governments tried to satisfy more and more real or perceived needs among their electorate. Spending and Taxation was on a relentless upward trajectory since the mid-1970s and I have always predicted that this trend line at some stage would hit a wall. Well, the wall has been well and truly hit and the community of economists does not have the guts to tell the populace and the politicians the truth: employment growth will not resume unless structural problems (distorted markets) are tackled. To promote the use of 'Helicopter Money' is utterly devoid of imagination and while it is not easy to predict the ultimate consequences of this policy I have the uneasy feeling that an act of this crudeness will not lead to a happy ending.