News Links: The debt hangover

Government borrowing soared everywhere after 2008 as government deficits ballooned. But in America the swelling of the public balance-sheet has mirrored a shrinking of private ones. Every category of private debt-financial, corporate and household-has fallen as a share of GDP since 2008.

The IMF is right, of course, to conclude that the eurozone crisis is the main risk facing the global economy right now. The world has a strong interest in the resolution of the crisis. But greater IMF involvement in specific EU programmes is not necessary, and quite possibly counterproductive.

The utility giant just announced its 38th consecutive increase.

For nearly two years, Apple has wooed digital book publishers and authors with its unconditional support of the open EPUB standard. With last week’s introduction of iBooks 2.0, Apple has deliberately locked out that standard. Here’s why you should care.

Over the years, I have read hundreds of license agreements, looking for little gotchas and clear descriptions of rights. But I have never, ever seen a legal document like the one Apple has attached to its new iBooks Author program.

The 81-year-old said he’d rather survive than stay rich as the world faces an ‘evil’ period and Europe fights a ‘descent into chaos and conflict’. He has backed the euro, bought $2billion in European bonds and insisted the economic climate is similar to the 1930s Great Depression.

Last May, at the 64th CFA Institute Annual Conference in Edinburgh, Scotland, veteran investor Felix Zulauf laid out a number of bearish predictions that have largely proved to be on the money. Now that six months have passed – and with so much happening in the world – we thought it was a good time to review his predictions and get a fresh update on his outlook for the economy and financial markets. Zulauf, who has been investing professionally since 1971, did not disappoint.

the financial sector lobbied long and hard for deregulation in recent decades, and spent a great deal of time and money persuading politicians that it constituted the safe and modern approach to banking. According to this view, government policies did not fail; on the contrary, they operated exactly as intended – and as bought and paid for. If this view is correct, the kind of policy prescription recommended by Ron Paul is less appealing. Unless you think that a modern financial sector really can operate with absolutely no regulation of any kind (including, presumably, the rules for banks that come with deposit insurance), the real problem is not government officials’ policy preferences, but what financial-sector lobbyists are able to persuade officials to do.

The sectoral snapshot of the economic financial balances shows that Japanese policy was indeed a success but also a failure.

Except via the possibility of expanding by another private sector led credit expansion which is highly unlikely, the Spanish economy faces the prospects of low output and demand.

It is true that 2 months is a very long time in European economics so anything could happen between now and then, but the outcome of Greece, either way, is adding pressure on to the other weak links of Europe, such as Portugal

Lowering rates in general in the first instance merely shifts interest income from ‘savers’ to borrowers. And with the federal government a net payer of interest to the economy, lowering rates reduces interest income for the economy. There is no question in my mind that the Fed has ample evidence to question their presumption that given today’s institutional structure lowering rates and quantitative easing may have been counter productive and made things worse as per the interest income channels.

Wir erleben an der Börse gerade eine Idiotenrally. Tatsächlich dauert die Schuldenmisere an. Sie ist frühestens vorbei, wenn wir mit der prozyklischen Krisenpolitik aufhören

L’agence de notation Standard and Poor’s a abaissé d’un cran les notes de trois grands groupes bancaires français (Société Générale, Crédit Agricole, BPCE) et privé de son « triple A » la Caisse des dépôts, bras armé financier de l’État.