financial history

Recently, deficit hawks have been pushing a nefarious line of argument that I need to debunk right here and right now. The line goes as follows: we need to spend government monies now to get the economy back on its feet. In a couple of…

Here in Washington, DC, we are preparing for the G-20 summit, the largest gathering of foreign leaders in this own since the 50th anniversary of NATO in 1999. The event has been billed as a latter-day Bretton Woods, a forum to reform the…

The U.S. Federal Reserve is tasked with watching inflation while keeping the economy growing. This dual mandate is a juggling act no mortal could manage successfully for long. The result has been a Fed which has largely erred on the side…

While yesterday was a very positive day in U.S. markets, with the Dow up over 300 points, the real action has been in Asia. The Nikkei bottomed at a 26-year low below 7200 on October 27th. Today, it stands at 9114.60. That is a gain of…

This is a quote from the populist American politician William Jennings Bryan, a Democrat famous at the beginning of the last century."There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the…

This morning in an e-mail exchange with Marshall Auerback, I questioned why the U.S. Dollar was rising so precipitously. I do understand much of this has to do with a need to refinance dollar-denominated borrowing by international…

While I am markedly more upbeat of late about economic matters, I still harbor some deep concerns about the direction of both the global economy and resultant political stability. The Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum has summed…

This amazing chart is interactive at the NYTimes:

The last time faced a recession and a Bear Market of such viciousness was 35 years ago in the recession of 1973-1975. In the UK, it was truly horrific as inflation shot up to 25% and stocks dropped more than 90% in inflation-adjusted terms.…

Marshall Auerback here. I have a quick thought regarding the credit crisis and bank lending in the US. If the real purpose of the Paulson Plan is recapitalization more than reliquification, and if the Scandinavian public recaps of their…