Skip to main content

Home/ Global Economy/ Group items tagged simon

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
5More

Big Banks' Tall Tales by Simon Johnson - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...-of-megabanks-by-simon-johnson
shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • In the second narrative, the world’s largest banks remain too big to manage and have strong incentives to engage in precisely the kind of excessive risk-taking that can bring down economies. Last year’s “London Whale” trading losses at JPMorgan Chase are a case in point. And, according to this narrative’s advocates, almost all big banks display symptoms of chronic mismanagement.
  • But a great myth lurks at the heart of the financial industry’s argument that all is well. The FDIC’s resolution powers will not work for large, complex cross-border financial enterprises.  The reason is simple: US law can create a resolution authority that works only within national boundaries. Addressing potential failure at a firm like Citigroup would require a cross-border agreement between governments and all responsible agencies.
  • I had the opportunity to talk with senior officials and their advisers from various countries, including from Europe. I asked all of them the same question: When will we have a binding framework for cross-border resolution?CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe answers typically ranged from “not in our lifetimes” to “never.” Again, the reason is simple: countries do not want to compromise their sovereignty or tie their hands in any way.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • This form of government support amounts to a large implicit subsidy for big banks.
  • What other part of the corporate world has the ability to drive the global economy into recession, as banks did in the fall of 2008?
8More

Mario Draghi Cannot Save the Euro - Bloomberg - 0 views

www.bloomberg.com/...aghi-cannot-save-the-euro.html Simon_Johnson
shared by Gene Ellis on 06 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Once you have understood that the ECB does not necessarily stand behind euro-area government debt, it is hard to disabuse yourself of the notion.
  • A broader question is what, if anything, Draghi might achieve with a looser monetary policy.
  • The euro area has many problems, including a lack of competitiveness in the periphery, chronically poor growth in countries such as Portugal and Italy, deeply damaged public finances in Greece and Spain, and a labor force that’s not mobile enough to go where the jobs are. Which of these could be resolved by reducing interest rates across the board?
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Maybe Draghi’s policies can buy time for deeper “structural changes” in the periphery, although quite what those are and what difference they would make in the near term remains elusive
  • It’s hard to see how providing politicians in troubled countries with unlimited credit will increase the likelihood of real reform of any kind.
  • More likely, a shift in ECB policies would make the European situation uglier. For one, Draghi would essentially be conceding fiscal dominance, demonstrating that if governments run budget deficits, they can count on the central bank to finance them.
  • Perhaps Draghi is planning the same game with fiscal authorities that the Banca d’Italia used to play with Italian politicians in the 1980s and early 1990s -- keep interest rates low enough to prevent fiscal collapse, yet high enough to keep fiscal prudence as a priority. Make no mistake about it, inflation or not, this is a strategy of high real interest rates.
  • Gene Ellis on 06 Aug 12
     
    Simon Johnson article - good
5More

The Economist explains: How countries calculate their GDP | The Economist - 0 views

www.economist.com/...economist-explains-26
shared by Gene Ellis on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • How countries calculate their GDP
  • Simon Kuznets, a Russian emigrant to America, is credited with creating the first true GDP estimate, for delivery to America’s Congress in 1934
  • Output can be measured in three (theoretically equivalent) ways: by adding up all the money spent each year, by adding up all the money earned each year, or by adding up all the value added each year. Some economies, including Britain, combine all three methods into a single GDP figure, whereas others, like America, produce different statistics for each.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • merica’s Bureau of Economic Analysis draws data from surveys of manufacturers, builders and retailers, as well as from trade and financial flows, among other sources. These data are used to estimate the components of GDP, such as total investment and net exports
  • Real, or inflation-adjusted, GDP is needed to compare figures across time periods, while GDP per person is best for understanding how individual incomes are evolving.
10More

Shifting energy trends blunt Russia's natural-gas weapon - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...3-a050-dc3322a94fa7_story.html
shared by Gene Ellis on 03 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • As clunky Soviet-era factories and mines have become more efficient or gone out of business, Ukraine’s domestic gas consumption has dropped nearly 40 percent over the past five years, cutting its imports from Russia in half, according to a report by Sberbank Investment Research.
  • Domestic consumption might drop further if Ukraine trims the generous subsidies it gives households using natural gas, although so few households are paying their bills that it might not matter. “People will go from not paying the lower price to not paying the higher price,” said Thane Gustafson, senior director of Russian energy for the consulting firm IHS CERA.
  • Even if residential customers paid up, the Ukrainian state energy company, Naftogaz, would lose money on those sales
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • “An inefficient and opaque energy sector continues to weigh heavily on public finances and the economy,” the International Monetary Fund said, noting that energy subsidies reached 7.5 percent of Ukraine’s GDP in 2012. “The very low tariffs for residential gas and district heating cover only a fraction of economic costs and encourage one of the highest energy consumption levels in Europe,” the IMF said in December.
  • Now, the upheaval of the past two weeks has thrown Ukraine’s gas strategy into greater confusion. “There is no government and there are no agencies to do business with,” said Simon Pirani, senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. “How high up the list of priorities it is is anyone’s guess.”
  • Even if the deals with foreign companies advance, Ukraine will need to import about half of its gas needs,
  • In 2012, many European industrial users and power plants switched to coal, and Russia agreed to renegotiate.
  • The link between gas and oil prices has been severed for about half of Russia’s gas sales.
  • Gazprom also agreed to eliminate contract clauses that said a country such as Germany could reship Russian gas only with Gazprom’s approval.
  • As a result, Ukraine ended up paying more than Gazprom’s customers in Germany, and last year Ukraine imported small quantities of natural gas from Germany and Hungary through pipelines in Slovakia and Poland, experts say. Germany buys gas from a variety of countries, but rerouted Russian gas has effectively been undercutting other Russian gas.
1 - 5 of 5
Showing 20▼ items per page