With inadequate fiscal policy, monetary policy labors to compensate, creating damaging economic distortions in the eurozone market.
By Bercan Begley – The pandemic has left millions of Europeans out of work and many underemployed, their businesses partly closed. Yet some are flourishing as never before. For European bourses, it has been marvelous. As the price of stocks has climbed, so has the wealth of those who own them.
Never have we seen such a disconnect between the real economy, the home of democracy, and the financial markets, the domicile for capitalists. And one institution has been at the centre of it all—the European Central Bank.
The ECB is perhaps the most powerful yet least understood institution in the eurozone. It has the power to engender economic, social and political change. Following the global financial crisis, the bank embarked on an epic experiment in monetary economics.
Two levers
There are two macroeconomic levers: fiscal and monetary policies. Before the introduction of the euro, both largely belonged to European Union member states. With monetary union, monetary policy moved to Frankfurt, centralized in the headquarters of the new ECB. Fiscal policy, such as tax-rate formulation, belonged to member states, but under the Maastricht treaty’s Stability and Growth Pact the European Commission supervised.
The lead-up to the crash saw profound capital misallocation in the eurozone. Pre-euro, ‘currency risk’ tempered financial venture-taking. A Munich-based bank would undertake due deliberation before converting Deutschmarks into Irish punts, due to the variability of exchange rates. Currency volatility played a risk-mitigating role, moderating investment allocation. Foolhardy owners of financial assets bore their losses and had no compensating recourse to the political domain. more>
By Michael Maiello – In theory, sovereign debt can be a healthy part of a growing economy. Governments can borrow from creditors to fund trade deficits, importing goods from other countries so their citizens can buy the products and enjoy the benefits.
By Lisa Shalett – The second half of February brought not just a market selloff, but also indications of a more serious potential shift in market outlook. Just two weeks after hitting a high of 3948 on Feb 16, the S&P 500, the benchmark index of the broader U.S. market, has fallen 3.5%, while the tech-and-growth-stock-heavy Nasdaq index is down about 6.4%. For some, that may seem like the kind of moderate dip that could be a buying opportunity, but we don’t believe that’s the case right now.
By Richard Vague – Monetarist theory, which came to dominate economic thinking in the 1980s and the decades that followed, holds that rapid money supply growth is the cause of inflation. The theory, however, fails an actual test of the available evidence. In our review of 47 countries, generally from 1960 forward, we found that more often than not high inflation does not follow rapid money supply growth, and in contrast to this, high inflation has occurred frequently when it has not been preceded by rapid money supply growth.
ITU – In a world where an 
By Andrew Clark -Some Dell laptops have an Intel processor inside, and some Betty Crocker brownie mixes use Hershey’s chocolate. The idea behind such co-branding is to generate synergies and marketing efficiencies. Does the strategy really work?
By Frank Partnoy – The reforms were well intentioned, but, as we’ll see, they haven’t kept the banks from falling back into old, bad habits. After the housing crisis, subprime CDOs naturally fell out of favor. Demand shifted to a similar—and similarly risky—instrument, one that even has a similar name: the CLO, or collateralized loan obligation. A CLO walks and talks like a CDO, but in place of loans made to home buyers are loans made to businesses—specifically, troubled businesses. CLOs bundle together so-called leveraged loans, the subprime mortgages of the corporate world. These are loans made to companies that have maxed out their borrowing and can no longer sell bonds directly to investors or qualify for a traditional bank loan. There are more than $1 trillion worth of leveraged loans currently outstanding. The majority are held in CLOs.
By Sally Goerner – Circulation represents the lifeblood of all flow-systems, be they economies, ecosystems, or living organisms. In living organisms, poor circulation of blood causes necrosis that can kill. In the biosphere, poor circulation of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, etc. strangles life and would cause every living system, from bacteria to the biosphere, to collapse. Similarly, poor circulation of money, goods, resources, and services leads to economic necrosis – the dying off of large swaths of economic tissue that ultimately undermines the health of the economy as a whole.
By Lena Deros – The term “bankster” has become trendy recently due to the various financial problems governments and economies are facing. Problems arise and somehow get resolved, but only through financial ruses.
