I et blog indlæg, No Keynesianism in the Berliner Morgenpost, opsummerer Cowen Tysklands dogmer således:

1. Økonomisk politik handler om effekterne på lang sigt.
2. Vækst skyldes høj produktivitet, primært i produktion.
3. Man låner ikke til forbrug!
4. Man gør, hvad der er nødvendigt, selvom det måske ikke er populært.
5. Regler skal være klare og rigide – lov er lov!
6. “Values matter, as do norms of cooperation.”
7. Fokuser ikke på at skabe lavtlønsjobs. Uddan i stedet og betal de lavtlønnede for at være arbejdsløse i dne mellemliggende periode.
8. Fokuser på forbedringer, gerne individuelt personligt.

Man skal nok ikke lægge for meget i ovenstående og så det, at Tyskland er et af de, økonomisk set, mest velledte lande i Europa – måske i Verden… Den form for politik er jo slet ikke sjov, og den giver heller ikke politikerne muligheden for at redde tilfældige industrier og nabolande, hvis Ulla Terkelsen eller Kontant tropper op med et kamera.

Næh, lad tyskerne føre den form for stramme, velovervejede politik, og lad vi andre gøre det modsatte.

O Gemini!

Grækenland afholdte i 2004 et smukt OL, ingen tvivl om det. De obligatoriske jubelscener, nye rekorder og veltrænede atleter fyldte tv-skærme verden over til stor glæde for de lige så obligatoriske tv-seere, der til lejligheden bliver sportsinteresserede.

Forud for et sådan pragtarrangement går naturligvis enorme forberedelser. Mange milliarder i investeringer går forud, og deriblandt et utal af bygninger, som værtslandet ikke tidligere havde behov for, og åbenbart heller ikke vil have efter. Således rapporterer en artikel fra Wall Street Journal om, hvordan stadions fra OL 2004 enten står tomme eller i dag bruges til andre formål – f.eks. er en badmintonhal i dag koncertsal. De tomme bygninger er ligefrem blevet et symbol på Grækenlands problemer under krisen.

Det mange glemmer, når de forudser vækst for et værtsland for OL, VM eller lign. er, at investeringerne ikke nødvendigvis afspejler det, de investeringer, der er brug for, i en alt andet lige situation. Med andre ord, så vil investeringerne ikke give afkast, når VM først er ovre. Derimod har man brugt en masse penge, som man formentlig ikke tjener ind igen.

Turisme giver derimod klart penge i kassen, og især i det pågældende år, hvor begivenheden afholdes. Men denne effekt kan nemt aftage, når først selve trækplasteret i form af sportsbegivenheder er væk.

For Grækenland er investeringerne blevet et udtryk for den forfærdelige situation, landet nu er i. Investeringer som i dag intet kaster af sig end dårlig samvittighed. Lad os håbe, at Sydafrika får mere ud af det. Jeg tvivler.

Historien bliver kun mere vanvittig af dette uddrag:

He added that many people who had taken these loans had probably paid more than they even took out in their initial loans, so he expects these people to get money back.

Michael Boskin skriveri  et interessant indlæg på Project Syndicate:

If Greece paid no interest on its debt and regained full employment, its fiscal deficit would still be an astounding 6% of GDP, but the corresponding figures elsewhere are similar, if not worse: 8% for Ireland, 5.6% for Spain, 6.8% for Great Britain, and 7.5% for the United States.

Boskin konkluderer:

The problem is not that governments lack resources to spend, but that higher government spending, taxes, and debt are eroding economic growth and future living standards.

HT: Steven Horwitz

Yep, det bliver et af de indlæg, der skal smides under ‘Groft sagt’-kategorien. Dette bliver en ‘line-by-line’ gennemgang.

Hélène Rey fra LSE skriver under overskriften Avoiding another financial collapse, at

The worldwide economic downturn sprang largely from the US and, more specifically, from the investment banks, rating agencies, Washington regulators and other players in big-time Wall Street finance.

Ingen kan benægte, at avancerede finansielle instrumenter hjalp den forudgående boble med at nå et omfang, som var markant større, end man formentlig havde nået uden. Såkaldte MBS‘er og deres overvurderede rating gjorde, at opturen forsatte i langt længere tid, end den formentlig ellers ville have gjort. Men at de skulle være skyld i krisen er noget groft. Det er nærmest menneskelig tradition for at pege fingre af ting, man ikke forstår, men jeg kender ikke Rey godt nok til at vide, om det er tilfældet her. Nedturen er en konsekvens af den stærkt overvurderende og urealistiske optur. Skabte et par fikse idéer til finansielle instrumenter denne enorme optur? Og hvordan har det i så fald kunne ske langt tilbage i historien, mest bemærkelsesværdigt i 1929? Selvfølgelig gjorde det ikke det, selvom det havde markant forværrende effekt. Løsnignen skla findes et andet sted.

So at this juncture — when the US Congress is considering financial regulation reform and the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has at last brought action against all-purpose bad guy Goldman Sachs (…)

All-purpose bad guy… Really!?

Herefter oplister Rey en række punkter:

The massive consumer indebtedness and current account deficit of the US preceded, and contributed to, the crisis — as did the US Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, which held interest rates too low for too long.

Kipper med hatten.

The structure of compensation within large US banks encouraged wild risk taking, while regulators were too complacent or too indulgent in the face of the banks’ charm offensive.

Ahhh, så var det vist heller ikke værre. Det er korrekt, at banksektoren er blevet liberaliseret en smule, men… se ovenfor.

A revolving door of officials who have shuffled over the years between Wall Street’s major players and various US presidential administrations — particularly those of Clinton and Obama — has raised more than a few eyebrows.

Medmindre man kan angribe deres handlinger er den kritik ikke meget værd – hvilket man formentlig sagtens kan.

Ratings agencies, wishing to protect their ever-increasing profits from Wall Street, failed to properly assess risk of the overly creative and complex financial instruments built on the shaky foundation of sub-prime mortgages.

Yep, og det er klart et område, hvor man er nødsaget til at forholde sig en smule pragmatisk og vurdere, hvad der bør gøres.

In the institutional collapse that we now know most merited a US government bailout (that of Lehman Brothers), the US Treasury Department declined to act and thus contributed to the further destabilisation of financial markets

Ja, regeringen kunne have forgældet USA endnu mere, hvilket ville have skabt mere ro på de finansielle markeder. Men at Lehman Brothers faldt skabte formentlig grobund for flere af de corporate takeover vi så i den efterfølgende periode. Havde regeringen handlet, havde man blot skabt større rum for moralsk hazard.

While the US government failed to aid Lehman as it should have, its multiple rescues of insurer AIG appear to have been misguided. The principal beneficiaries of the government’s AIG assistance — no surprise — have been the largest of Wall Street’s banks

Som man ellers, ifølge Reys egen logik, skulel have reddet senere.

Securitisation, more than any other factor, led to both the transfer of toxic assets to the balance sheets of many financial institutions, pension funds and government units and to the deterioration of credit quality. Banks that securitise and sell financial products to other institutions have little incentive to be concerned about the quality and ratings of the loans they sell off.

Det er som om Rey, og mange andre med hende i øvrigt, glemmer, at netop disse mekanismer skabte, hvad der tydede på at være enorm velstand, og som siden faldt og afslørede de store økonomiske problemer, vi nu befinder os i. Før 2008 hørte man økonomer tale om ‘en ny tid’ – altid et faresignal under bobler – og nu beskylder mange af de selvsamme økonomer de instrumenter, der førte til den ‘nye økonomi’, for at være hele årsagen til krisen. Det er, som antydet ovenfor, naturligvis ikke tilfældet. Derimod har et overudbud af likviditet ført til, at man kunne foretage flere handler samtidig, end ellers, og se den nominelle værdi stige i et væk. Havde pengeudbuddet været konstant til produktionsraten*, vilel dette ikke have været muligt, da nye investeringer i en branche ville skule modsvares af enten lavere forbrug eller lavere investerigner i en anden sektor.

Disse finansielle instrumenter kan altså sammenlignes med moteren i en bil. Vel at mærke en bil uden ret, fordi økonomien allerede er nominelt dysfunktionel. En større motor gør skaden større, når bilen kører galt, men det er ikke i sig selv motorens skyld.

Given the revenues, profits and compensation schemes of Wall Street’s heavy hitters in lobbying, it’s hardly surprising that they’re now throwing all their weight into shaping regulation of the financial system in a way that would preserve their rents. Will Congress, the White House and the regulators be able this time, unlike previous times, to resist?

I hope not! Hvis vi skal hurtigt ud af krisen, får vi brug for så potente finansielle markeder som overhovedet muligt.

But the euro’s founders also set debt and deficit limits. The problem is not that these limits were too loose. The problem is having them at all. The mere existence of the limits says, in effect, that politicians will have a hard time resisting bailout pressure. So the markets lent at low rates and gave high bond ratings. The EU rediscovered that it’s much harder to grow a spine in the middle of a crisis.

The euro founders should have said instead, “Go ahead, use our currency if you like. Rack up any debts you want. We don’t care, because we are not going to bail you out—we’ve set it up so we can’t bail you out. Bond buyers beware.”

The euro founders never decided whether they were creating the perfect currency without fiscal union, or if they were creating a fiscal union on the way to political union.

Cochrane leverer en interessant tanke, men jeg tror desværre også, at den er yderst naiv.

Jeg ved godt, at nedenstående er blevet et langt citat-helvede, men jeg synes bestemt det er værd at læse – jeg tillader mig at vurdere, da jeg ikke selv har skrevet det.

Mankiw – Bernanke on Happiness:

I am reminded of a story about Abraham Lincoln. According to the story, Lincoln was riding with a friend in a carriage on a rainy evening. As they rode, Lincoln told the friend that he believed in what economists would call the utility-maximizing theory of behavior, that people always act so as to maximize their own happiness, and for no other reason. Just then, the carriage crossed a bridge, and Lincoln saw a pig stuck in the muddy riverbank. Telling the carriage driver to stop, Lincoln struggled through the rain and mud, picked up the pig, and carried it to safety. When the muddy Lincoln returned to the carriage, his friend naturally pointed out that he had just disproved his own hypothesis by putting himself to great trouble and discomfort to save a pig. “Not at all,” said Lincoln. “What I did is perfectly consistent with my theory. If I hadn’t saved that pig, I would have felt terrible.”

Æren burde strengt taget tilfalde Bernanke, men jeg læste det hos Mankiw.

Tyler Cowen – Sentences to Ponder:

“There’s a reason elite schools speak of training leaders, not thinkers—holders of power, not its critics.”

Paul Krugman – Ignoring The Elephant In the EURO:

[N]ote that if you pretend that it’s all about fiscal profligacy, the problem seems solvable with a bit more discipline, but if you admit that the original optimum currency area issues are key to the situation, you wonder whether the common currency really makes sense.

Tyler Cowen – Social welfare expenditures in the United States and the Nordic Countries:

Per capita net public social expenditures in the U.S. rank behind only Sweden. Add in the private spending, and per capita spending in the U.S. is higher than in all of the Nordic countries.

James Hamilton – Inflation, taxation, and the underground economy:

Even though much of economic activity is outside of the government’s control, the government can still tax that activity by choosing a higher inflation rate

(…)

(…)

Aruoba’s interpretation is that the weaker a country’s institutions, the greater the attractiveness of the informal sector, and the more the government is likely to rely on inflation rather than standard taxes to raise revenue.

(…)

Tyler Cowen thinks those bars look unsettlingly like dominoes.

Martin Feldstein – For a solution to the euro crisis, look to the states:

The structure of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) that created the euro actually encourages members to run large deficits. A country with its own currency would see that currency deteriorate and its interest rates rise if it sold large amounts of debt to global investors. But because EMU countries share a currency, there has been no market feedback to warn when a country’s deficit is getting dangerously high.

(…)

Here there may be something to learn from United States. (…) The basic reason for these small deficits is that each state’s constitution prohibits borrowing for operating purposes. States can issue debt to finance infrastructure but not salaries, services, transfer payments or other operating expenses.

(…)

The European Central Bank could accelerate this process by restricting collateral to bonds issued by governments with satisfactory constitutional limits on their deficits.

De fleste husker, hvordan krisen i 2008 sprang ud i fuld flor, så jeg vil ikke kommentere så meget, blot gengive to grafer fra Calculated Risk.

Andelen med negativ ‘friværdi’ fordelt på stat:

Fordelingen af ‘friværdi’ på størrelse: