Karrenzieher und Politicos

Posted by Andreas van de Kamp on 22. September 2017, staatsstreich.at

Hier eine Erklärung für das Verhalten unserer demokratisch legitimierten Politicos, die ganz ohne Freimaurer und europäische Lebensmüdigkeit auskommt: Die Politiker (fast) aller Parteien haben mit- und gegeneinander ein Wirtschaftssystem gebaut, das zwingend scheitern muss, das mithilfe der Zentralbank(en) aber sehr lange am Leben erhalten werden konnte – Jahrzehnte länger als zu erwarten gewesen wäre. Seine Lebensverlängerungs-Möglichkeiten sind jetzt aber ausgeschöpft. Deswegen versucht man die Flucht nach vorne – in “EU” und “replacement migration”.

Das System zeichnet sich durch eine ständige Erhöhung und Verbreiterung der Steuer- und Abgabenlast für immer weniger Produktive aus, die immer mehr Unproduktive “erhalten müssten”.

Rein rechnerisch.

$2 Trillion Later, Does the Fed Even Know if Quantitative Easing Worked?

Date: 22-09-2017
Source: The Wall Street Journal

As the central bank sets out to reverse quantitative easing, there are at least three reasons not to worry too much about its impact on markets—and one good reason to be concerned

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen  after the central bank indicated it remained on track to raise short-term rates later this year and said it would begin shrinking its portfolio of bonds next month.

After spending $2 trillion on government bonds in an effort to stimulate the economy, the U.S. Federal Reserve can hardly admit that it doesn’t know how, or even if, it worked.

Fed Chairwoman Janet Yellen on Wednesday came as close as she’s ever likely to get to accepting that quantitative easing is still poorly understood even by the experts. Explaining why the central bank prefers to set short-term rates rather than buy or sell stuff, she said it was because “we believe we understand pretty well what the effects [of rate changes] are on the economy,” and so do investors. Left unsaid: No one’s really sure how, or if, QE works.

This matters enormously to investors as the Fed sets out on quantitative tightening. It’s starting small, allowing a maximum of $10 billion of bonds a month to mature without the money being reinvested. But in a year, that will be up to $50 billion a month—more than the Fed bought each month during the first phase of QE3 in 2013.

The teaching of economics gets an overdue overhaul

Date: 21-09-2017
Source: The Economist: Free exchange

Students are forced to grapple with the real world from the very beginning of their courses

ECONOMISTS can be a haughty bunch. But a decade of trauma has had a chastening effect. They are rethinking old ideas, asking new questions and occasionally welcoming heretics back into the fold. Change, however, has been slow to reach the university economics curriculum. Many institutions still pump students through introductory courses untainted by recent economic history or the market shortcomings it illuminates. A few plucky reformers are working to correct that: a grand and overdue idea. Overhauling the way economics is taught ought to produce students more able to understand the modern world. Even better, it should improve economics itself.

Bitcoin is fiat money, too

Date: 22-09-2017
Source: The Economist: Free exchange

What Charles Kindleberger has to say about cryptocurrencies

FINANCIERS with PhDs like to remind each other to “read your Kindleberger“. The rare academic who could speak fluently to bureaucrats and normal people, Charles Kindleberger designed the Marshall Plan and wrote vast economic histories worthy of Tolstoy. “Read your Kindleberger” is just a coded way of saying “don’t forget this has all happened before”. So to anyone invested in, mining or building applications for distributed ledger money such as bitcoin or ethereum: read your Kindleberger.

Start with A Financial History of Western Europe, in which Kindleberger documents how many times merchants in different centuries figured out clever ways of doing the exact same thing. They made transactions easier, and in the process created new deposits and bills that increased the supply of money. In most cases, the Bürgermeister or the king left these innovations in place, but decided to control the supply of money and credit themselves. It is good for the king to be in charge of his own creditors. But also, it has always been tempting for private finance to create too much money. There is no evidence that money born on a distributed ledger will be clean of this sin.

Germany’s Crisis of Complacency

Helmut K. Anheier

Helmut K. Anheier is President and Professor of Sociology at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Sep 22, 2017 Helmut K. Anheier, Project Syndicate

Over the past decade, Germany has gone from being the “sick man of Europe” to a bastion of stability. But with German Chancellor Angela Merkel poised to gain a fourth term, it is worth asking if too much stability can be a bad thing.

BERLIN – What a difference a decade makes. Ten years ago, Germany was cast as “the sick man of Europe,” owing to its apparent unwillingness to reform. The country suffered from high unemployment, declining competitiveness, a failing education system, an aging and shrinking population, and public debt that exceeded the limits set by the European Union’s Stability and Growth Pact.

But that was then. Today, Germany is regarded as a bastion of political stability and an island of widely shared prosperity in Europe and the world. This Sunday, Germans will elect a new government, and will most likely give Chancellor Angela Merkel a fourth term. She will then be on track to surpass her mentor, the late Helmut Kohl, as Germany’s second-longest-serving chancellor, after Otto von Bismarck. Germans can thus expect continued political stability in Berlin, and in most of their country’s 16 Länder (federal states).

Structural Reforms Give Biggest Help To Lagging Countries

By Angana Banerji and Christian Ebeke, IMF Blog

September 22, 2017

Structural reforms can jumpstart productivity in countries with weaker initial productivity, and help them catch up with their peers 

Labor and product market reforms, which make economies more efficient, can benefit all countries. But they are especially helpful in jumpstarting productivity in countries where productivity is weaker. This is good news as it implies that reforms are one route through which countries with lower per capita incomes can catch up with richer countries instead of persistently lagging behind: economic hardship is not destiny. Our new paper provides fresh arguments in favor of the often-difficult structural reforms.

Structural reforms—the retooling of the regulations and structures that govern a country’s economy—remain politically and socially difficult to implement in many countries, because transitioning to the new regime may create winners and losers from adjustment. This is universally true, including in the euro area. Our study looks into which countries gain most from structural reforms and why, thereby once again making the case for such reforms, despite their associated costs.

The least efficient gain the most