EconoCitizen

mercredi 18 février 2015

Un peu de Krugman sur la Grèce

Mesure-t-on réellement l'effort fait par la Grèce pour s'ajuster ? Savez--vous que la baisse de PIB est équivalente à l'Allemagne de Weimar de l'après première guerre mondiale ?

Comparative Austerity : l'effort réel d'austérité de la Grèce

mercredi 1 janvier 2014

The State of the Euro, In One Graph - P Krugman

The State of the Euro, In One Graph

borrowing costs for the troubled euro countries have dropped a lot. But it’s not because austerity policies have brought their debt under control — debt ratios are still rising, in large part because of shrinking economies and deflation. Instead, there has been a dramatic flattening of the relationship between debt and interest rates

The timing strongly suggests that it’s mainly the Draghi effect — that the ECB’s signal that it will, in a pinch, act as sovereign lender of last resort has removed much of the fear of self-fulfilling liquidity panics. It’s possible that there has also been some reduction in the political risk premium, because European nations are proving amazingly determined to stay on the euro at almost any cost.

as a europessimist, I do have to admit that it’s now possible to see how this could work. The cost — economic, human, and political — will be huge. And the whole thing could still break down. But the ECB’s willingness to step up and do its job has given Europe some breathing room.

On the English "recovery"

The basic fact of UK economic performance since the financial crisis is that it has been terrible — in fact, as the NIESR documents, GDP performance has been substantially worse than during the Great Depression:

The only reason Britain isn’t suffering terrifyingly high unemployment is the fact that, for reasons not clear, productivity has collapsed, so that the shrunken economy is still employing a lot of people.
Cameron/Osborne imposed a lot of austerity in their first two years, then let up substantially. In effect, they spent a while banging Britain’s head against the wall, and are now claiming vindication, because it feels good when they stop.

From P Krugman : The Three Stooges Do Westminster
Osborne and the Stooges, NYT, P Krugman

mardi 31 décembre 2013

Krugman

- The Fear Economy, NYT, Krugman : When the economy is weak, however, workers have a very weak hand, and employers are in a position to work them harder, pay them less, or both. /
Is there any evidence that this is happening? And how. The economic recovery has, as I said, been weak and inadequate, but all the burden of that weakness is being borne by workers. Corporate profits plunged during the financial crisis, but quickly bounced back, and they continued to soar. Indeed, at this point, after-tax profits are more than 60 percent higher than they were in 2007, before the recession began. We don’t know how much of this profit surge can be explained by the fear factor — the ability to squeeze workers who know that they have no place to go. But it must be at least part of the explanation.

- Krugman, Jean-Baptiste Say, Cockroach

A zombie idea is an idea that should have died long ago in the face of evidence or logic, but just keeps shambling forward, eating peoples’ brains. I first saw the term in the context of Canadian health care, where it was used with respect to assertions that hordes of Canadians are crossing the border in search of care, or vast numbers of Canadian doctors emigrating. But it applies to many concepts, like the insistence that cutting tax rates on the wealthy leads to soaring economic growth, which remains dogma on the right in the teeth of all the evidence.

- Krugman, Cynical Fantasies

You say that there’s nothing putting a floor under Bitcoin’s value? Well, how do you know that the government won’t debase the dollar to nothing? Huh? Huh?
Don’t governments with the power of the printing press universally abuse that power?
Yes, Weimar. Also Zimbabwe. And, in recent decades, who else? Actually, nobody. The real track record of fiat currencies is that most of them are run responsibly except in the aftermath of political chaos. If you look at the actual facts, you discover that episodes of high inflation have become quite rare, even though nobody is on the gold standard or (except in the euro area) anything like it.
It’s similar, by the way, to another cynical and supposedly realist notion, which is that fiscal stimulus never goes away, that programs instituted to fight a slump inevitably become permanent. This is also totally untrue

- Why Inequality Matters, NYT, Krugman

Autre macro-économie
- Pourquoi l'Allemagne a-t-elle saboté l'union bancaire ?, La Tribune
- "Une union bancaire crédible, mais incomplète", Libération, Blog Coulisses de Bruxelles
- La Lettonie veut entrer dans la zone euro, mais pas les Lettons, La Tribune
- L'économie britannique pourrait dépasser l'économie française d'ici quatre ans, La Tribune

Divers
- FEDERER : "BIZARRE DE GAGNER DE L'ARGENT AVEC UN HOBBY", Eurosport Mag