Category: World Economy

Posen on stimulus

Last week’s news was terrible, but I felt even more depressed the week before. If we enter a spiral in which we get worse news on GDP and GNP than expected, and then conclude that we will have to push through even more deflationary budgets than previously planned, then we have entered a doom loop from which there is no escape.

Unless.

(Unless what?)

Unless the cavalry comes charging to the rescue, is what. Unless Ireland is bailed out economically by the rest of the world, via a world trade boom that allows us to export our way to recovery.

Unfortunately, there are lots of question marks hanging over this scenario right now. The cavalry is uncertain as to where it is headed, and for every piece of good news we get from overseas, there is a corresponding piece of bad news (and vice versa). Any honest forecast of where we are headed in the immediate future will have extremely wide confidence bands associated with it, which in the Irish case will surely straddle the zero axis.

This is why it is so utterly in Ireland’s interests that policy makers overseas listen carefully to Adam Posen (short version here, longer version here). I strongly urge people to read the full speech. It is a carefully argued (and, for a central banker, passionate) plea for further stimulus measures, as well as for a certain way of thinking about the macroeconomy. It is nice to know that some central bankers, at least, understand how serious are the downside risks facing the world economy right now.

I am sure that our political leaders enjoyed their moment in the sun this spring as poster boys for austerity. But insofar as they contributed to a feeling that austerity was the right policy everywhere — and not just in basket cases like Greece and Ireland — they did their country a disservice. Far better to have a quiet word with their colleagues in more solvent states, pointing out to them our nine successive quarters of shrinking real GNP, and to say to them: this is what austerity can do, even in an economy as small and open as ours. Are you really sure you want to follow suit?

Politics in hard times

The FT is full of depressing news stories this morning, none of which are surprising.

In the US, a Tea Party candidate won the Republican nomination for the Senate elections in Delaware.

In France, Sarkozy suggested that Luxembourg (home of the Commissioner who sharply criticized him for the Roma expulsions) would do well to welcome a few Roma itself.

In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in the neo-Nazi movement, may be on the brink of an electoral breakthrough that might see it hold the balance of power after the elections there.

And the Japanese decision to weaken the yen is provoking tension with Europeans and Americans.

Lots of zero sum thinking out there this morning: history rhyming.

FT article on German growth

This FT article is well worth reading. It asks a question I had been idly wondering about: is German growth just a reflection of Chinese growth? If so, then the issue of whether Chinese (or more broadly, perhaps, Asian) growth can become self-sustaining, or will continue to largely depend on sales to over-indebted American households, is a question with major implications for the European economy.

Update: I have just come across this piece by David McWilliams on similar themes. I guess the hope for Germany is that their growth is based on more, ultimately, than Chinese exports to the likes of us.

Now that’s what I call a stress test

HT Calculated Risk

Eichengreen and Temin on systems failures

Barry Eichengreen and Peter Temin have written classic accounts of the Great Depression. If you haven’t read Golden Fetters, and Lessons from the Great Depression, you should.

But if you don’t have time for that, they have a piece on Vox which reprises the main conclusion of their work:

an international monetary system is .. a system in which countries on both sides of the exchange rate contribute to its smooth operation. Actions by surplus countries, and not just their deficit counterparts, have systemic implications. They cannot realistically assign all responsibility for adjustment to their deficit counterparts.

This is as true for EMU and “Bretton Woods II” as it was for Bretton Woods, or the Gold Standard, but it is a lesson that at times seems to have been completely forgotten.