I have been getting a lot of calls from investors, those with a longer-term focus as well as the usual short-term hedgies, who are obviously concerned about the political and economic developments in Turkey. I used to urge them to be cautious, while also emphasizing the potential gains they could have if Turkey emerges from … Read more
We had a lot of data releases in Turkey this week. Rather than delve into the nitty gritties of the statistics, I would like to point out some general themes that emerged. Here is the intro. my latest Hurriyet Daily News (HDN) column, where I go over a few general themes that emerged from this … Read more
In recent weeks the Job Guarantee proposal has gained supporters, and the arguments for an increased government role in ensuring full employment have become stronger. (See here: http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/job-guarantee-2.html; here http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2014/01/dazed-confused-matt-yglesias-job-guarantee.html; and here http://moslereconomics.com/2013/11/19/comments-on-bakerbernstein-book/.) In this piece, I examine why. Bear with me because I will tie together four threads. First, we have the return of … Read more
The Basel Committee’s recent decision to change the definition of the leverage ratio is bad news for two reasons. There’s the obvious: A smaller denominator means less capital. The leverage ratio requirement says, in principle, that banks must have capital equal to at least X% of their total unweighted assets, where “assets” is supposed to include anything … Read more
According to preliminary figures released this morning, Turkish business channel CNBC-e’s preliminary consumer confidence index plunged in January. Well, “plunged’ may be an understatement, but I couldn’t find a stronger word. See for yourself: The graph has the main index as well as the two sub-indices: Consumer expectation is based on the forward-looking questions of … Read more
Just about everyone (myself included) who ventured a payrolls forecast was crushed by the scant December gain of just 74k. How much should you adjust your outlook on the basis of just this one number? Not much, if at all. It is important to watch for trends in the data, and always keep Barry Ritholtz’s warning in … Read more
As we wrote at the halfway point of last year in “The New Sick-onomy? Examining the Entrails of the U.S. Employment Situation” (July 24, 2013, also available in pdf here) and as we updated in September 2013, an alarming proportion of the new job creation we saw in the first three quarters of 2013 were … Read more
This version, revised June 25, 2014, corrects errors in calculating the value of the personal exemption and the size of the Social Security population that were present in the January original. The first post in this series looked at the economic case for a universal basic income (UBI), by which I mean an unconditional grant, … Read more
The Wall Street Journal has written it’s latest “just so” article about how leftist Latin American leaders (Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela) are bad and rightist Latin American leaders (Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru) are wonderful. It quotes favorably this dismissal of progressive leaders. “’We set out to create the Pacific Alliance because we wanted to set ourselves apart from … Read more
The negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program have be shrouded in secrecy. But the on-goings of Iran’s oil ministry are providing insight into the dynamics at play on the Iranian side, and it is about time someone starts connecting the dots. It is no secret that Iran seeks the return of Western international oil … Read more