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Sunday, May 27

27th May - Weekender: Economics & Regulation


Weekend's reading package on Economics and Regulation, have fun!

 
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Previously on MoreLiver's:
ECONOMICS
Conducting monetary policy - rules, learning and risk managementBIS (pdf)
William C Dudley, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at the C Peter McColough Series on International Economics, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 24 May 2012.

The nationalisation of markets: The rise of the financial-political complexThe Economist
Each step taken by the authorities over the past five years has been designed to prop up the economy and save the financial system. But the cumulative effect has been the creeping nationalisation of markets.

State Dependence and Fiscal MultipliersEconbrowser
impact of fiscal policy on economic activity varies with the business cycle and that the effect of fiscal policy on output is nonlinear. Average fiscal multipliers in G-7 countries are significantly larger in times of negative output gaps than when the output gap is positive

Fiscal cliffs, multipliers, and the myth of central bank independenceThe Economist
Plenty of budget cuts coming at the end of the year…Fed independence is at any time little more than a useful illusion; it is only independent to the extent that its actions don't provoke government intervention.

What Bagehot said…alphaville / FT
Bagehot never argued that central banks should lend only against good collateral. Bagehot was subtler than that, and less exclusive. What he argued was that central banks should lend against collateral that would be good “in ordinary times”.

Humbler horizonsThe Economist
America’s economy is growing at an unimpressive rate. It may not be able to go much faster

Why can’t people understand national accounting?Credit Writedowns
The real policy question should be how to eliminate the malinvestment and reallocate capital investment to useful productive enterprises without creating a deflationary spiral…debts that can’t be repaid, won’t be. Rather than resist this process, policy makers should embrace it and mitigate the downside.

Leveraging expectations through monetary policyMacro Matters
the need for a credible nominal anchor for a central bank to target, even if policy making bodies such as the ECB, Fed and BoE were to adopt an alternative mantra to the current pure inflation or flexible inflation targeting regimes. The reasons why this is necessary are different across the three central banks named above.

Anonymous: The Fable of “Moral Arithmetic”naked capitalism
Warren Mosler applies simple arithmetic to numerical relations that have a $ sign (or € sign), and explains clearly how a money economy works.

China’s failed gamble for growthASA
So the wish that domestic demand will grow sustainably is not realised despite throwing in huge amount of money, and the rest of the world has not recovered according to plan.  Worse still, by throwing in that much money to stimulate investment,
China has committed a huge error in that it has built even more production capacity on top of the over-capacity that was probably present before the massive stimulus.

Tight correlation between Macau gaming revenue and Chinese economyASA
Macau: propped up by high-rollers, but for how long?beyondbrics / FT
Here we go again. Another sharp sell-off of Macau gaming shares on China slowdown fears. Industry forecasts have always underestimated Chinese high-rollers’ propensity to gamble, so are the latest prediction of gloom to be trusted?

REGULATION
Whom Should We Prevent From Blowing Themselves Up, And Why?Dealbreaker
So thinking that bringing back Glass-Steagall would do much to prevent future crises requires you to basically think that non-banks don’t matter that much: that only commercial banks like JPMorgan are “gambling with taxpayers’ money” or whatever and so need to be cut off from nefarious goings-on like whatever is somewhat more nefarious than the London whale’s doings.

FDIC Rule Change Ends Too Big to FailThe Big Picture
…all it would take is the right person (with the support of their board) sending a simple letter…Here is that letter from the office of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s chairman, circa 2015:

Stop the Big Banks Before They Can Lend AgainView / BB
Pressing the more- regulation default button creates the impression that human beings can anticipate the next new product, asset class or financial innovation and write rules to prevent the next blowup. It also ends up deflecting attention from the real goal of financial regulation, which is not to protect the banks but to shield taxpayers from the cost of any institutional failure.

Regulatory Capital: Size And How You Use It Both MatterTF Market Advisors
After JPM’s surprise loss this month, the debate over the proper regulatory framework and capital requirements will reach a fever pitch.  That is great, but maybe it is also time to step back and think about what capital is supposed to do, and with that as a guideline, think of rules that make sense.

How to Fix Bankingnaked capitalism
the world of finance does appear to be unable to accept reality – the bigger financial institutions, the SIFI’s, almost feel like they are trading to their heart’s content in the knowledge that they are simply too big to fail and someone else will pick up the tab if they get it wrong.

Random regulation – an interesting but dangerous ideaDeus Ex Macchiato
…impose one policy approach randomly on some members of the population, but not on others, to determine whether the policy meets its goals.