Revue de presse- 31/12/2013

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