Leestips - Zaterdagbijlage DDSFI 08 juni 2013

Op zaterdagen zal de redactie van DDSFI proberen u wekelijks een portie leesvoer voor het weekend te geven: tien artikelen die wij gaande de week selecteren uit de vloed van stukken de wij doornemen om onze analyses te onderbouwen en te kunnen doorgeven: onze Zaterdagbijlage. Soms zullen dit artikelen zijn over zaken die niet aan bod zijn gekomen, andere vertegenwoordigen een visie die niet de onze is, maar die desalniettemin van belang is om kennis van te nemen.

U vindt hier de titel (wat direct ook de link is), en de eerste alinea.

01. It’s Time to Change Focus From Reinhart-Rogoff Witch Hunts to Krugman’s Contradictions
You may have seen the new skirmishes this weekend in the very public debate about Carmen Reinhart’s and Kenneth Rogoff’s government debt research. Reinhart and Rogoff (I’ll call them RR) posted a letter to Paul Krugman on Reinhart’s website, in response to a piece that Krugman wrote for The New York Review of Books.

02. Is a minimum wage an appropriate instrument for redistribution? (pdf)
Is a minimum wage optimally employed alongside income taxation in order to redistribute income? We show that the answer to this question fundamentally depends on what happens to the workers that are rationed by the minimum wage. On the one hand, a minimum wage leads some workers to become involuntarily unemployed. On the other hand, some workers will seek to avoid the increased probability of unemployment by acquiring the skills to work for a better-paid job that is not a ected by the minimum wage. We nd that a minimum is part of optimal government policy if and only if the welfare loss of higher unemployment.

03.Shocking - Volatile bond yields may spell trouble for Abenomics
It is the one thing that was not supposed to happen. On April 4th the Bank of Japan (BoJ) announced its shock-and-awe plan to hoover up ¥7 trillion ($68 billion) of government bonds a month and double the monetary base. But instead of producing rising bond prices and falling yields, the central bank’s actions have so far led to the opposite.

04. Quantitative quicksand
Almost all recoveries from recession have included rapid employment growth – until now. Though advanced-country central banks have pursued expansionary monetary policy in the wake of the global economic crisis in an effort to boost demand, job creation has lagged. As a result, workers, increasingly convinced that they will be unable to find employment for a sustained period, are leaving the labor force in droves.

05. The Truth About Wall Street Analysts & Why You Need Independence
Turn on financial television or pick up a financially related magazine or newspaper and you will hear or read about what some stock analyst from some major Wall Street brokerage has to say about the markets or a particular company.   For the average person, and for most financial advisors, this information as taken as "fact" and is used as basis for portfolio investment decisions.  But why wouldn't you?  After all Carl Gugasian of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe just rated Bianchi Corp. a "Strong Buy."   That rating is surely something that you can "take to the bank", right?

Maybe not.

06. EU elections could usher in nationalist and anti-EU radicals
The 2014 European Parliament election may suffer from a low turnout and see a strong mobilisation of voters in favour of radical nationalist and anti-EU parties, Gallup Europe predicts on the basis of a new survey. The elections could result in a drastic change in the landscape of European democracy, the pollster said when “EU Election 2014 countdown: One year to go” in Brussels on Wednesday (5 June).

7. Don’t Dismiss the Possibility of Gold Confiscation
If you hold precious metals in your portfolio, there is a good chance you fear hyperinflation and the crash of fiat currencies. You probably distrust governments in general and believe they are self-serving and have no interest in your economic well-being. It is likely that your holdings in gold are your lifeline – your hope to get you through these times while holding on to your wealth.

8. Is a Freefall in Oil Prices Really Underway?
Over the past three weeks, there have been numerous headlines insinuating that a freefall in oil prices is underway. Last week I read that the various causes were a slowdown in China’s economy, OPEC’s decision not to cut production, and America’s growing oil production. Based on the headlines, one might suspect that we were right in the middle of a major bear market for oil.

09. The 4th amendment violations will continue until morale improves
For some, it’s hard to even fathom as if the headlines were ripped from the Onion instead of Atlas Shrugged or 1984:

NSA Is Wired Into Top Internet Companies’ Servers, Including Google and Facebook

NSA reportedly collecting phone records of millions

Former NSA head defends agency reportedly spying on millions of Americans

US gov’t defends NSA surveillance, slams ‘reprehensible’ journalists

10. 18 Signs That Massive Economic Problems Are Erupting All Over The Planet
This is no time to be complacent.  Massive economic problems are erupting all over the globe, but most people seem to believe that everything is going to be just fine.  In fact, a whole bunch of recent polls and surveys show that the American people are starting to feel much better about how the U.S. economy is performing.  Unfortunately, the false prosperity that we are currently enjoying is not going to last much longer.  Just look at what is happening in Europe.  The eurozone is now in the midst of the longest recession that it has ever experienced.  Just look at what is happening over in Asia.  Economic growth in India is the lowest that it has been in a decade and the Japanese financial system is beginning to spin wildly out of control.

*11. Are central bankers losing control?
The last couple of weeks have been very interesting. Remember that, certain regional differences aside, Japan has, for the past two-plus decades, been the global trendsetter in terms of macroeconomic deterioration and monetary policy. It was the first to have a major housing and banking bubble, the first to see that bubble burst, to respond with years of 1 percent interest rates, then zero rates, then various rounds of quantitative easing. The West has been following Japan each step on the way – usually with a lag of about ten years or so, although it seems to be catching up of late. Now Japan is the first developed nation to go ‘all-in’, to implement a no-holds-barred money-printing regime to (supposedly) ‘stimulate’ the economy. This is called Abenomics, after Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, the new poster-boy of policy hyper-activism. I expect the West to follow soon. In fact, the UK is my prime candidate. Wait for Mr. Carney to start his new job and embrace ‘monetary activism’. Carnenomics anybody?

*Dit 11e artikel is op het laatste moment toegevoegd vanwege het actuele karakter er van.