I understand the desire and all but how the fuck do you stop them from becoming the Bank of Somalia and telling you to fuck your size limit laws?
Same way we handle monopolies when we're not bought off by the monopolies?
I think the realities of the situation are slightly different from 100 years ago, or even 30 when we broke up Ma Bell. Note that Ma Bell had a huge infrastructure that firmly tied them to a specific country. A large portion of the investment finance stuff from BoA could happily base off shore.
I think this is a giant can of worms that isn't as easy as saying "Pass a Law."
I don't understand.
BoA starts up a new company separate from their banking services and the financial stuff that America says is ok, and locates it in a new country.
hey look, BoA is smaller and the bits people depend on is separate from their high stakes gambling operations.
They moistly come out at night, moistly.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
I will concede that if we want to become a dictatorship we could do it by cutting all ties to the world economy. We could have our very own little North Korea in America.
We have done worst without becoming a dictatorship, but feasibly I think the FDIC should wait until BoA is in the red zone then just take over. They already have the authority and case law to back them up on it. Then Sell it off in chunks. There will only be a few buyers, so it does not remove the problem, but it can be spread out to several smaller banks.
No, the problem is that investment finance does not a have strong tie to a locality. This is like what happened when they tried to ban online poker in the US except there is more money involved by a factor of a 1000 and a much greater incentive for a small country to simply get bought out. This is going to raise the whole question of where sovereignty ends when the world is as interconnected as it is.
These are issues we are going to have to address at some point in the future but brushing them aside to say "Fuck x!" is very much the wrong way to do it.
We can limit what they can do to things within our country. They can fuck up somewhere else, sure, because we're not going to go and kill them all. What are they going to do, have black market ATMs?
I understand the desire and all but how the fuck do you stop them from becoming the Bank of Somalia and telling you to fuck your size limit laws?
Same way we handle monopolies when we're not bought off by the monopolies?
I think the realities of the situation are slightly different from 100 years ago, or even 30 when we broke up Ma Bell. Note that Ma Bell had a huge infrastructure that firmly tied them to a specific country. A large portion of the investment finance stuff from BoA could happily base off shore.
I think this is a giant can of worms that isn't as easy as saying "Pass a Law."
I don't understand.
BoA starts up a new company separate from their banking services and the financial stuff that America says is ok, and locates it in a new country.
hey look, BoA is smaller and the bits people depend on is separate from their high stakes gambling operations.
I think you have the likely arrangement backwards. Base the main company in BOA-topia, do your location required stuff through small wholly owned subsidiaries in America and then the crazy financial investment stuff in BOA-topia.
No, the problem is that investment finance does not a have strong tie to a locality. This is like what happened when they tried to ban online poker in the US except there is more money involved by a factor of a 1000 and a much greater incentive for a small country to simply get bought out. This is going to raise the whole question of where sovereignty ends when the world is as interconnected as it is.
These are issues we are going to have to address at some point in the future but brushing them aside to say "Fuck x!" is very much the wrong way to do it.
We can limit what they can do to things within our country. They can fuck up somewhere else, sure, because we're not going to go and kill them all. What are they going to do, have black market ATMs?
The money, and the fuck ups do not really come from people like you or me. The behavior you are trying to stop has pretty much zero interaction with ATMs.
The money, and the fuck ups do not really come from people like you or me. The behavior you are trying to stop has pretty much zero interaction with ATMs.
Elected officials have the power to fuck BoA and its ilk up pretty seriously. That power has NOT gone away just because they're corrupt or being voted in by the deranged and ignorant. As such, if the citizenry forces them out of their corruption, it can be dealt with. BoA hasn't installed kill chips in their brains, nor can they hire enough assassins to take out the US military.
The money, and the fuck ups do not really come from people like you or me. The behavior you are trying to stop has pretty much zero interaction with ATMs.
Elected officials have the power to fuck BoA and its ilk up pretty seriously. That power has NOT gone away just because they're corrupt or being voted in by the deranged and ignorant. As such, if the citizenry forces them out of their corruption, it can be dealt with. BoA hasn't installed kill chips in their brains, nor can they hire enough assassins to take out the US military.
Yes, we can cut ourselves off from the world economy.
We can go kick in BoA's metaphorical door and take all their US based shit. Who actually owns that shit will leads to some interesting geopolitical consequences about whose billions we just stole. That'll sure be fun.
Seizing BoA is on the same level of useful discussion as turning the middle east into a radioactive parking lot. We could probably do either, we just won't.
I understand the desire and all but how the fuck do you stop them from becoming the Bank of Somalia and telling you to fuck your size limit laws?
Same way we handle monopolies when we're not bought off by the monopolies?
I think the realities of the situation are slightly different from 100 years ago, or even 30 when we broke up Ma Bell. Note that Ma Bell had a huge infrastructure that firmly tied them to a specific country. A large portion of the investment finance stuff from BoA could happily base off shore.
I think this is a giant can of worms that isn't as easy as saying "Pass a Law."
I don't understand.
BoA starts up a new company separate from their banking services and the financial stuff that America says is ok, and locates it in a new country.
hey look, BoA is smaller and the bits people depend on is separate from their high stakes gambling operations.
I think you have the likely arrangement backwards. Base the main company in BOA-topia, do your location required stuff through small wholly owned subsidiaries in America and then the crazy financial investment stuff in BOA-topia.
I forgot the word not there. The banking stays here. The financial stuff the SEC et al. allow stays here.
that's ok.
The crazy stuff goes on over in BOAistan, and when they implode again... what? we bail out a foreign bank that was set up expressly to get around our financial regulations?
I forgot the word not there. The banking stays here. The financial stuff the SEC et al. allow stays here.
that's ok.
The crazy stuff goes on over in BOAistan, and when they implode again... what? we bail out a foreign bank that was set up expressly to get around our financial regulations?
I'm not sure I'm following your premise. It seems to be that somewhere around 10 years ago BoA (or whoever) had an evil plan to do some crazy risky financial shit that would crash their company and get bailed out. I do not think that happened.
I think they had lucrative financial transactions that they underestimated the risk on and it burned them. I'm also confident they think they've learned their lesson, these new improved transactions are foolproof and will totally make financial guy y who came up with them really rich and you too if you sign over a few million right now.
Oh, but the US is run by a populist mob who wants to restrict your ability to use your own money as you see fit! Good thing we have our financial services based in BoaTopia! Just set up a wire transfer and we'll get going!
In what I was talking about the company holding the bag (not that they consider that really a possibility) is still going to be the one with the massive overall assets that the entire world (which realistically means mostly us) will need to prevent from vanishing in a puff of smoke if the new improved whatever is fucking retarded.
I understand the desire and all but how the fuck do you stop them from becoming the Bank of Somalia and telling you to fuck your size limit laws?
Same way we handle monopolies when we're not bought off by the monopolies?
I think the realities of the situation are slightly different from 100 years ago, or even 30 when we broke up Ma Bell. Note that Ma Bell had a huge infrastructure that firmly tied them to a specific country. A large portion of the investment finance stuff from BoA could happily base off shore.
I think this is a giant can of worms that isn't as easy as saying "Pass a Law."
This sums up my view on the economy, immigration, national security, the drug war, legalizing Marijuana, and citizenship.
Yes, we can cut ourselves off from the world economy.
You can mitigate risk. It is a thing. I know people don't do it often but it's a thing.
We can go kick in BoA's metaphorical door and take all their US based shit. Who actually owns that shit will leads to some interesting geopolitical consequences about whose billions we just stole. That'll sure be fun.
We do what we did with Bell, except we don't let them start undoing it a few decades later.
Seizing BoA is on the same level of useful discussion as turning the middle east into a radioactive parking lot. We could probably do either, we just won't.
Seizing assets is a silly thing to do when you can just regulate the fuck out of a thing.
Ok, I was wondering if anyone could give me a bit of help here. I'm doing some stuff on Input-Output modelling and I'm having trouble finding some good descriptions/info/books/etc. I've been doing a little looking around internet style but haven't found a ton that's useful via googling. I thought books would be a good place to start but I wouldn't even know where to start looking on that front.
Anyone know anything about this subject or at least some good books or resources?
Also if you know any good software and the like for this kind of thing. Canadian or American data tables anyway.
I think my "favorite" part is the second graph under part 3, the "Real GDP versus Employment" graph. You know, the one that says we're just as productive as we were pre-recession, but we're doing it with 6.6 million fewer jobs. Which points to that whole "income disparity" thing, and the fact that the super-wealthy are raking it in, while the rest of us are fucked.
Also interesting that our productivity has increased tremendously over the past few years, and our pay has gone down. Pretty much puts lie to that whole "work hard and you'll make more money" idea that the Republicans like to sell people.
I think my "favorite" part is the second graph under part 3, the "Real GDP versus Employment" graph. You know, the one that says we're just as productive as we were pre-recession, but we're doing it with 6.6 million fewer jobs. Which points to that whole "income disparity" thing, and the fact that the super-wealthy are raking it in, while the rest of us are fucked.
Also interesting that our productivity has increased tremendously over the past few years, and our pay has gone down. Pretty much puts lie to that whole "work hard and you'll make more money" idea that the Republicans like to sell people.
I think my "favorite" part is the second graph under part 3, the "Real GDP versus Employment" graph. You know, the one that says we're just as productive as we were pre-recession, but we're doing it with 6.6 million fewer jobs. Which points to that whole "income disparity" thing, and the fact that the super-wealthy are raking it in, while the rest of us are fucked.
Also interesting that our productivity has increased tremendously over the past few years, and our pay has gone down. Pretty much puts lie to that whole "work hard and you'll make more money" idea that the Republicans like to sell people.
As a CSer, I still wonder what role computer technology has played its part by fundamentally changing the nature of work. While it does point to the income disparity thing, I feel like the computer revolution (and globalization) are serious factors in the ability of the super-wealthy to rake it in as they are now, by greatly lowering the amount of manual labour required to achieve the same level of productivity.
I think my "favorite" part is the second graph under part 3, the "Real GDP versus Employment" graph. You know, the one that says we're just as productive as we were pre-recession, but we're doing it with 6.6 million fewer jobs. Which points to that whole "income disparity" thing, and the fact that the super-wealthy are raking it in, while the rest of us are fucked.
Also interesting that our productivity has increased tremendously over the past few years, and our pay has gone down. Pretty much puts lie to that whole "work hard and you'll make more money" idea that the Republicans like to sell people.
As a CSer, I still wonder what role computer technology has played its part by fundamentally changing the nature of work. While it does point to the income disparity thing, I feel like the computer revolution (and globalization) are serious factors in the ability of the super-wealthy to rake it in as they are now, by greatly lowering the amount of manual labour required to achieve the same level of productivity.
I would be inclined to agree, if 2002 to 2007 didn't look like it does. We were definitely computerizing then, too.
It seems America’s bankers are tired of all the abuse. They’ve decided to speak out.
True, they’re doing it from behind the ropeline, in front of friendly crowds at industry conferences and country clubs, meaning they don’t have to look the rest of America in the eye when they call us all imbeciles and complain that they shouldn’t have to apologize for being so successful.
But while they haven’t yet deigned to talk to protesting America face to face, they are willing to scribble out some complaints on notes and send them downstairs on silver trays. Courtesy of a remarkable story by Max Abelson at Bloomberg, we now get to hear some of those choice comments.
Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, for instance, is not worried about OWS:
“Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” Marcus said. “Are you kidding me?”
Former New York gurbernatorial candidate Tom Golisano, the billionaire owner of the billing firm Paychex, offered his wisdom while his half-his-age tennis champion girlfriend hung on his arm:
“If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit,” said Golisano, who turned 70 last month, celebrating the birthday with girlfriend Monica Seles, the former tennis star who won nine Grand Slam singles titles.
Then there’s Leon Cooperman, the former chief of Goldman Sachs’s money-management unit, who said he was urged to speak out by his fellow golfers. His message was a version of Wall Street’s increasingly popular If-you-people-want-a-job, then-you’ll-shut-the-fuck-up rhetorical line:
Cooperman, 68, said in an interview that he can’t walk through the dining room of St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida, without being thanked for speaking up. At least four people expressed their gratitude on Dec. 5 while he was eating an egg-white omelet, he said.
“You’ll get more out of me,” the billionaire said, “if you treat me with respect.”
Finally, there is this from Blackstone CEO Steven Schwartzman:
Asked if he were willing to pay more taxes in a Nov. 30 interview with Bloomberg Television, Blackstone Group LP CEO Stephen Schwarzman spoke about lower-income U.S. families who pay no income tax.
“You have to have skin in the game,” said Schwarzman, 64. “I’m not saying how much people should do. But we should all be part of the system.”
Sarkozy has gone berserk with the Tobin tax.
German 6 months returned negative yield(despite normal interest).
Central European countries nobody's been talking about in serious trouble.
Fun times.
Well since all I've heard out of Greece lately is that they're trying to indict the people involved in getting the last bailout things are not looking good there.
So I have this persistent question: where does the austerity agenda in the Euro Zone come from?
I mean, it seems that after 236 years of the formalized study of economics that highly-placed technocrats would understand what happens when you impose austerity during an economic slowdown. Yet there it is.
I asked a Marxist friend of mine, but he predictably replied that it's because they're part of the neoliberal orthodoxy that sees public spending beyond some minimalist threshold as being The Sum of All Evils; additionally, and somewhat more cynically, that their only concern is with giving foreign capital an escape route.
So what say you, Econ Thread?
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
So I have this persistent question: where does the austerity agenda in the Euro Zone come from?
I mean, it seems that after 236 years of the formalized study of economics that highly-placed technocrats would understand what happens when you impose austerity during an economic slowdown. Yet there it is.
I asked a Marxist friend of mine, but he predictably replied that it's because they're part of the neoliberal orthodoxy that sees public spending beyond some minimalist threshold as being The Sum of All Evils; additionally, and somewhat more cynically, that their only concern is with giving foreign capital an escape route.
So what say you, Econ Thread?
My uninformed view on it is that Europe, along with the US and Canada responded to the financial collapse of the last decade by turning to Conservative governments who by fiat hate public spending. I have a friend who's deeply involved with the GOP and refuses to admit that austerity doesn't work even when presented with evidence.
The same sort of mindset that lets someone looks at a disappearing ice sheet and think global warming's a myth or lets the Obama administration think that the newly elected Tea Party Congress surely won't want the US to default.
I have a pet theory that one of the main reasons the policy response to the current economic crisis has been so bad is that we had the wrong crisis. Some people sat around looking at the US economy from 2002-2006 and thought all was well. But many people looked at it and could see clearly that all was not well. That we were on an unsustainable path and that we were primed for a crash. ...
There was no particular reason to believe that this crisis would lead to a prolonged period of mass unemployment since the dollar crash would facilitate exports (including tourism) and import-competing industries, but it would very possibly create a stubborn residual of long-term unemployed people. What's more, it would be a prolonged crisis in American living standards. The good news, from the standpoint of the policy wonk, is that it would be a very intellectually interesting prolonged crisis in American living standards. It would require all kinds of fascinating big ideas to explain how this could have happened and how to chart the way forward. And precisely because lots of smart people foresaw the occurrence of that crisis, and because that crisis really seemed very likely, and since a crisis certainly did happen a diverse array of smart people have just sort of trundled along acting as if the crisis we're facing is that crisis.
That explains the technocrats, I think. For Europe the perspective is even more severe, because default is a credible problem.
In the 90s many states decided to move business cycle policy to central banks and everything else, including solvency, to fiscal authorities; this was particularly appealing for e.g., Greece because of past problems with debt restructuring.
As for everyone else besides the technocrats, do recall that businessmen in the Depression advocated pretty much the same things they are doing now, namely austerity, lower taxes, and a stronger currency.
I have a pet theory that one of the main reasons the policy response to the current economic crisis has been so bad is that we had the wrong crisis. Some people sat around looking at the US economy from 2002-2006 and thought all was well. But many people looked at it and could see clearly that all was not well. That we were on an unsustainable path and that we were primed for a crash. ...
There was no particular reason to believe that this crisis would lead to a prolonged period of mass unemployment since the dollar crash would facilitate exports (including tourism) and import-competing industries, but it would very possibly create a stubborn residual of long-term unemployed people. What's more, it would be a prolonged crisis in American living standards. The good news, from the standpoint of the policy wonk, is that it would be a very intellectually interesting prolonged crisis in American living standards. It would require all kinds of fascinating big ideas to explain how this could have happened and how to chart the way forward. And precisely because lots of smart people foresaw the occurrence of that crisis, and because that crisis really seemed very likely, and since a crisis certainly did happen a diverse array of smart people have just sort of trundled along acting as if the crisis we're facing is that crisis.
That explains the technocrats, I think. For Europe the perspective is even more severe, because default is a credible problem.
In the 90s many states decided to move business cycle policy to central banks and everything else, including solvency, to fiscal authorities; this was particularly appealing for e.g., Greece because of past problems with debt restructuring.
As for everyone else besides the technocrats, do recall that businessmen in the Depression advocated pretty much the same things they are doing now, namely austerity, lower taxes, and a stronger currency.
Right, but you would think that Keynesianism had discredited that approach to dealing with recessions/depressions. I mean, I get that stagflation happened, and that Volcker-ism/hawkishness on inflation was an effective policy for its time and place... but does that discount the totality of interventionist Keynesian approaches?
I have to assume that the technocrats (either on the fiscal or the monetary side) are perfectly aware of what happened here in the '30s, or in Japan in the late '90s, and would prefer to proceed accordingly... but they're not. It's all just CUT CUT CUT.
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I have a pet theory that one of the main reasons the policy response to the current economic crisis has been so bad is that we had the wrong crisis. Some people sat around looking at the US economy from 2002-2006 and thought all was well. But many people looked at it and could see clearly that all was not well. That we were on an unsustainable path and that we were primed for a crash. ...
There was no particular reason to believe that this crisis would lead to a prolonged period of mass unemployment since the dollar crash would facilitate exports (including tourism) and import-competing industries, but it would very possibly create a stubborn residual of long-term unemployed people. What's more, it would be a prolonged crisis in American living standards. The good news, from the standpoint of the policy wonk, is that it would be a very intellectually interesting prolonged crisis in American living standards. It would require all kinds of fascinating big ideas to explain how this could have happened and how to chart the way forward. And precisely because lots of smart people foresaw the occurrence of that crisis, and because that crisis really seemed very likely, and since a crisis certainly did happen a diverse array of smart people have just sort of trundled along acting as if the crisis we're facing is that crisis.
That explains the technocrats, I think. For Europe the perspective is even more severe, because default is a credible problem.
In the 90s many states decided to move business cycle policy to central banks and everything else, including solvency, to fiscal authorities; this was particularly appealing for e.g., Greece because of past problems with debt restructuring.
As for everyone else besides the technocrats, do recall that businessmen in the Depression advocated pretty much the same things they are doing now, namely austerity, lower taxes, and a stronger currency.
Right, but you would think that Keynesianism had discredited that approach to dealing with recessions/depressions. I mean, I get that stagflation happened, and that Volcker-ism/hawkishness on inflation was an effective policy for its time and place... but does that discount the totality of interventionist Keynesian approaches?
I have to assume that the technocrats (either on the fiscal or the monetary side) are perfectly aware of what happened here in the '30s, or in Japan in the late '90s, and would prefer to proceed accordingly... but they're not. It's all just CUT CUT CUT.
Reaganomics was disproven, too. It doesn't stop massive numbers of people from thinking it's a good idea.
Reaganomics is just the brand-name for neoliberalism -- without all the "Commie" impurities like strong social welfare programs and reinvestment in education -- and, by and large, is advocated by people who don't actually know how an economy works. I was referring to people who presumably hold PhDs in economics who feel that the public sector needs to pare back during an economic slowdown, when historically the only approach that hasn't worked during such times.
Hamurabi on
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Reaganomics is just the brand-name for neoliberalism -- without all the "Commie" impurities like strong social welfare programs and reinvestment in education -- and, by and large, is advocated by people who don't actually know how an economy works. I was referring to people who presumably hold PhDs in economics who feel that the public sector needs to pare back during an economic slowdown, when historically the only approach that hasn't worked during such times.
The general argument presented is still "they didn't cut hard/fast enough!" I don't think that's a good excuse, myself.
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Tiger BurningDig if you will, the pictureRegistered User, SolidSaints Tuberegular
edited February 2012
The purpose of austerity isn't to fix the economy, it's to fix the government's balance sheet. I'm pretty sure that close to zero of the serious advocates of austerity expect it to have a salutary effect on economic growth overall, in the near term.
Actually, since about the mid-90s the macroeconomic consensus, even among the economist left-wing, has been that monetary policy dominates fiscal policy, even during recessions. It is hard to deny that, for example, Canada appeared to have gotten away with contractionary policy by simply depreciating the CAD a lot.
Neoliberalism got taken up by Clinton and Blair and so on (thirdwayism) and it is worth noting that those claiming the ghost of Reagan now are pushing policy that is a lot further right than the Reagan administration ever was.
Right, but you would think that Keynesianism had discredited that approach to dealing with recessions/depressions. I mean, I get that stagflation happened, and that Volcker-ism/hawkishness on inflation was an effective policy for its time and place... but does that discount the totality of interventionist Keynesian approaches?
I have to assume that the technocrats (either on the fiscal or the monetary side) are perfectly aware of what happened here in the '30s, or in Japan in the late '90s, and would prefer to proceed accordingly... but they're not. It's all just CUT CUT CUT.
You need to appreciate that the 60s-era American school of Keynesianism has been solidly discredited, to the extent that what you are advocating right here is Keynesianism as interpreted through the lens of the 'neoliberal' era, with a distinct monetary and fiscal policy choice and such employed as specific responses to recessions, not Keynesianism as it was understood in the past (permanent demand management through a purely fiscal approach, with endogenous money and a weak central bank).
The 1987 recession discredited monetarism but did not resurrect Keynesianism; instead the consensus you are alluding to replaced both. The consensus depended on central banks always being able to lower interest rates. It died when this ceased to be the case.
Since "keynesian" has changed over the years, I'm going to talk about the difference in the early to mid 1970's, because: that's when Monetarism came into prominence as a serious alternative to Keynesianism; it's the earliest I can remember.
At the policy level, the difference between M's and K's was a question of which policy instrument to assign to which target.
Keynesianism:
Fiscal policy is assigned aggregate demand and unemployment.
Monetary policy is assigned the composition of aggregate demand between consumption and investment (or, in a small open economy, the composition of demand between net exports and domestic absorption).
Which leaves inflation left over. They distinguished between "demand-pull" and "cost-push" inflation. Cost-push inflation (inflation even when the economy is at less than full-employment) was variously assigned to: industrial policy (try to raise productivity and reduce the monopoly power of firms and unions); and various forms of price and wage controls (does anybody remember TIP and MAP, which where taxes on inflation and a cap-and-trade quota on inflation?).
Monetarism:
Monetary policy is assigned aggregate demand and inflation.
Fiscal policy is assigned the composition of demand between consumption and investment, net exports and domestic absorption.
Which leaves unemployment left over. Unemployment was assigned to the sorts of labour market policies that the Keynesians thought of as anti-cost-push policies.
In short, all the targets and instruments swapped partners.
It was never easy to get at the root of the theoretical differences that underlay these policy differences on the assignment question.
The Keynesians really did believe that the Phillips Curve was downward-sloping, even in the long run. The whole talk about "cost-push inflation" (which is how Keynesians interpreted the adverse shift in the Phillips Curve in the 1970's) shifting the Phillips Curve northwards only makes sense if you believe the PC slopes down.
It was not so many decades ago that *every* budget speech talked about the effect of G and T on AD, and whether fiscal policy was needed to stimulate or reduce AD.
Canada/US/UK really did impose price and/or wage controls to combat inflation.
Economists really did argue that monetary policy could not control inflation, or, even if it could, the price would be permanently higher unemployment than it otherwise would be.
The recent past really was a whole other world.
Do recall that European countries in fact did engage in expansionary policy in response to the GFC; what we are seeing here is a response to an (additional) threat of a debt crisis.
That explains the technocrats, I think. For Europe the perspective is even more severe, because default is a credible problem.
This was my understanding of the austerity measures, specifically Greece. The massive disparity between pensions/government spending/etc compared to the revenue shortfall (tax evasion), coupled with their lack of currency control by being locked to the Euro means that default is a very real risk. If you accept that a Greek default would be bad for other European countries, then you're left with the current situation where they need to 'save' Greece.
While it is probably terrible for their local economy, I can absolutely understand the perspective of the other European countries to not want to keep pouring money into a hole where structural problems might prevent the economy from ever recovering. Better to take the pain in the short term and fix the problems, than to throw money at them and hope they can get their act together in the future (again, my interpretation of their perspective).
Personally, I think this makes some sense in the specific case of Greece. Why this seems like it might be spreading to other countries doesn't make any sense to me though.
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I don't understand.
BoA starts up a new company separate from their banking services and the financial stuff that America says is ok, and locates it in a new country.
hey look, BoA is smaller and the bits people depend on is separate from their high stakes gambling operations.
We can limit what they can do to things within our country. They can fuck up somewhere else, sure, because we're not going to go and kill them all. What are they going to do, have black market ATMs?
I think you have the likely arrangement backwards. Base the main company in BOA-topia, do your location required stuff through small wholly owned subsidiaries in America and then the crazy financial investment stuff in BOA-topia.
The money, and the fuck ups do not really come from people like you or me. The behavior you are trying to stop has pretty much zero interaction with ATMs.
Elected officials have the power to fuck BoA and its ilk up pretty seriously. That power has NOT gone away just because they're corrupt or being voted in by the deranged and ignorant. As such, if the citizenry forces them out of their corruption, it can be dealt with. BoA hasn't installed kill chips in their brains, nor can they hire enough assassins to take out the US military.
Yes, we can cut ourselves off from the world economy.
We can go kick in BoA's metaphorical door and take all their US based shit. Who actually owns that shit will leads to some interesting geopolitical consequences about whose billions we just stole. That'll sure be fun.
Seizing BoA is on the same level of useful discussion as turning the middle east into a radioactive parking lot. We could probably do either, we just won't.
I forgot the word not there. The banking stays here. The financial stuff the SEC et al. allow stays here.
that's ok.
The crazy stuff goes on over in BOAistan, and when they implode again... what? we bail out a foreign bank that was set up expressly to get around our financial regulations?
I'm not sure I'm following your premise. It seems to be that somewhere around 10 years ago BoA (or whoever) had an evil plan to do some crazy risky financial shit that would crash their company and get bailed out. I do not think that happened.
I think they had lucrative financial transactions that they underestimated the risk on and it burned them. I'm also confident they think they've learned their lesson, these new improved transactions are foolproof and will totally make financial guy y who came up with them really rich and you too if you sign over a few million right now.
Oh, but the US is run by a populist mob who wants to restrict your ability to use your own money as you see fit! Good thing we have our financial services based in BoaTopia! Just set up a wire transfer and we'll get going!
In what I was talking about the company holding the bag (not that they consider that really a possibility) is still going to be the one with the massive overall assets that the entire world (which realistically means mostly us) will need to prevent from vanishing in a puff of smoke if the new improved whatever is fucking retarded.
This sums up my view on the economy, immigration, national security, the drug war, legalizing Marijuana, and citizenship.
Can I use this quote IRL?
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
You can mitigate risk. It is a thing. I know people don't do it often but it's a thing.
We do what we did with Bell, except we don't let them start undoing it a few decades later.
Seizing assets is a silly thing to do when you can just regulate the fuck out of a thing.
Just having drones circle BOA 24/7
Hint: the problem is still with Congress.
Ok, I was wondering if anyone could give me a bit of help here. I'm doing some stuff on Input-Output modelling and I'm having trouble finding some good descriptions/info/books/etc. I've been doing a little looking around internet style but haven't found a ton that's useful via googling. I thought books would be a good place to start but I wouldn't even know where to start looking on that front.
Anyone know anything about this subject or at least some good books or resources?
Also if you know any good software and the like for this kind of thing. Canadian or American data tables anyway.
Thanks for the help in advance!
I think my "favorite" part is the second graph under part 3, the "Real GDP versus Employment" graph. You know, the one that says we're just as productive as we were pre-recession, but we're doing it with 6.6 million fewer jobs. Which points to that whole "income disparity" thing, and the fact that the super-wealthy are raking it in, while the rest of us are fucked.
Also interesting that our productivity has increased tremendously over the past few years, and our pay has gone down. Pretty much puts lie to that whole "work hard and you'll make more money" idea that the Republicans like to sell people.
Family income will definitely go down when everyone gives up having children.
The fact that those wedding rings look like Sauron made them doesn't help.
As a CSer, I still wonder what role computer technology has played its part by fundamentally changing the nature of work. While it does point to the income disparity thing, I feel like the computer revolution (and globalization) are serious factors in the ability of the super-wealthy to rake it in as they are now, by greatly lowering the amount of manual labour required to achieve the same level of productivity.
German 6 months returned negative yield(despite normal interest).
Central European countries nobody's been talking about in serious trouble.
Fun times.
I mean, it seems that after 236 years of the formalized study of economics that highly-placed technocrats would understand what happens when you impose austerity during an economic slowdown. Yet there it is.
I asked a Marxist friend of mine, but he predictably replied that it's because they're part of the neoliberal orthodoxy that sees public spending beyond some minimalist threshold as being The Sum of All Evils; additionally, and somewhat more cynically, that their only concern is with giving foreign capital an escape route.
So what say you, Econ Thread?
My uninformed view on it is that Europe, along with the US and Canada responded to the financial collapse of the last decade by turning to Conservative governments who by fiat hate public spending. I have a friend who's deeply involved with the GOP and refuses to admit that austerity doesn't work even when presented with evidence.
The same sort of mindset that lets someone looks at a disappearing ice sheet and think global warming's a myth or lets the Obama administration think that the newly elected Tea Party Congress surely won't want the US to default.
I'm not sure what causes it.
That explains the technocrats, I think. For Europe the perspective is even more severe, because default is a credible problem.
In the 90s many states decided to move business cycle policy to central banks and everything else, including solvency, to fiscal authorities; this was particularly appealing for e.g., Greece because of past problems with debt restructuring.
As for everyone else besides the technocrats, do recall that businessmen in the Depression advocated pretty much the same things they are doing now, namely austerity, lower taxes, and a stronger currency.
Right, but you would think that Keynesianism had discredited that approach to dealing with recessions/depressions. I mean, I get that stagflation happened, and that Volcker-ism/hawkishness on inflation was an effective policy for its time and place... but does that discount the totality of interventionist Keynesian approaches?
I have to assume that the technocrats (either on the fiscal or the monetary side) are perfectly aware of what happened here in the '30s, or in Japan in the late '90s, and would prefer to proceed accordingly... but they're not. It's all just CUT CUT CUT.
Reaganomics was disproven, too. It doesn't stop massive numbers of people from thinking it's a good idea.
"We're not cutting hard enough!"
The general argument presented is still "they didn't cut hard/fast enough!" I don't think that's a good excuse, myself.
Neoliberalism got taken up by Clinton and Blair and so on (thirdwayism) and it is worth noting that those claiming the ghost of Reagan now are pushing policy that is a lot further right than the Reagan administration ever was.
You need to appreciate that the 60s-era American school of Keynesianism has been solidly discredited, to the extent that what you are advocating right here is Keynesianism as interpreted through the lens of the 'neoliberal' era, with a distinct monetary and fiscal policy choice and such employed as specific responses to recessions, not Keynesianism as it was understood in the past (permanent demand management through a purely fiscal approach, with endogenous money and a weak central bank).
The 1987 recession discredited monetarism but did not resurrect Keynesianism; instead the consensus you are alluding to replaced both. The consensus depended on central banks always being able to lower interest rates. It died when this ceased to be the case.
I have posted this before, it is a good summary:
Do recall that European countries in fact did engage in expansionary policy in response to the GFC; what we are seeing here is a response to an (additional) threat of a debt crisis.
This was my understanding of the austerity measures, specifically Greece. The massive disparity between pensions/government spending/etc compared to the revenue shortfall (tax evasion), coupled with their lack of currency control by being locked to the Euro means that default is a very real risk. If you accept that a Greek default would be bad for other European countries, then you're left with the current situation where they need to 'save' Greece.
While it is probably terrible for their local economy, I can absolutely understand the perspective of the other European countries to not want to keep pouring money into a hole where structural problems might prevent the economy from ever recovering. Better to take the pain in the short term and fix the problems, than to throw money at them and hope they can get their act together in the future (again, my interpretation of their perspective).
Personally, I think this makes some sense in the specific case of Greece. Why this seems like it might be spreading to other countries doesn't make any sense to me though.