Roubini on the Instability of Inequality

Business-school professor and economist Nouriel Roubini earned his nickname Dr. Doom by repeatedly predicting the chain of events that would cause the global economic house of cards to fall down. Yesterday he laid out the economic dilemmas that are triggering a global Occupy movement and concludes: “Any economic model that does not properly address inequality will eventually face a crisis […]

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Why Deleveraging Hurts So Much

Last Friday I had the honour of sharing the podium (and a good supper afterward) with Steve Keen, the awesome Australian economist who was recently named the winner of the “Revere Award” for most accurately forewarning of the global financial crisis.  In fact, that award was announced the same day we spoke together to the Politics in the Pub speaker’s […]

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Revere Award for Economics

The real world economic review is still accepting votes from the public for the “Revere Award for Economics”.  This is to be awarded to the three economists “who first and most clearly anticipated and gave public warning of the Global Financial Collapse and whose work is most likely to prevent another GFC in the future”. This is a follow up to […]

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A hat tip from Maclean’s

A year after crunching the numbers and coming to the conclusion that an economic downturn spelled deficits, I got this hat tip in Maclean’s: It’s true that there was no consensus forecast, through most of last year, that saw Canada suffering a deep recession in 2009, and a return to staggering deficits in Ottawa. However, it’s false to suggest that […]

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Preventing a Global Slump

Here is a particularly gloomy but I think realistic assessment from the Financial Times economics editor Martin Wolf who has become just as gloomy as Roubini.  I fear outright deflation beckons if the G-20 leaders don’t get their act together in just two weeks. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6e23cdc8-a517-11dd-b4f5-000077b07658.html Preventing a global slump must be the priority By Martin Wolf Published: October 28 2008 […]

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CLC Response – The FULL Version!

Here’s the full version of the summary posted earlier – a much longer analytical section, and more detail on our suggested policy response. http://canadianlabour.ca/en/clc-response-economic-crisis-full-version CLC Response to the Economic Crisis Global capitalism: on the edge of the abyss Dramatic recent events have thrown into sharp relief some chronic and long-standing problems of our global and national economic system: an over-developed […]

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More rate cuts?

Nouriel Roubini takes a dig at the Bank of Canada: [Yesterday] the Bank of Canada started to get it by, unexpectedly, cutting its policy rate by 25bps; but 25bps is puny given the liquidity crunch in global markets that has also spread to the Canadian markets.  50bps or more was the minimum necessary to deal with a Loonie that is […]

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Economic Apocalypse Soon?

Nouriel Roubini – professor at NYU and noted blogger on the global economy – tends to the gloomy but is now seriously worried about where  we are headed. With the Economist now out with a front page story on the likelihood of a serious US recession, his views seem to be entering the mainstream.   http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini   With the Recession […]

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The Big One?

There is a point in a good party when you decide either to stop and get home at a decent hour, or you throw caution to the wind and decide that there is no time like the present. In the current mess of the financial markets, how is it possible that any sane banker would not have noticed until now […]

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A Minskian analysis of US economy and financial markets

Nouriel Roubini invokes the great, but relatively unknown, Post-Keynesian economist, Hyman Minsky, in his latest dispatch about the state of US financial markets and economy. Minsky made the point that finance and financial markets matter, and in fact can have disastrous consequences for the real economy if left unchecked, and therefore institutions like prudent regulation and central banks are essential […]

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Business Week: The Poverty Business

While William Watson and Margaret Wente are shrugging their shoulders at growing inequality in Canada, and endorsing policies that would make our income distribution more like that of our southern neighbour, concerns in the US about rising inequality are actually getting a better hearing. An example is the following article in Business Week (The Poverty Business: Inside U.S. companies’ audacious […]

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Channeling Marx

As we have been hearing about the legacies of the great minds of economics, a name that has not cropped up much lately is Marx. The first article below suggests that Marx’s ideas live with us in the global economy, and growing inequality has awoken the old guy’s spirit. With it we are seeing a resurgence of the word “capitalism” […]

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Mortgage excesses in the US

This is scary: The Concerns of Comptroller of the Currency About the Excesses in the Mortgage Market Nouriel Roubini | Dec 18, 2006 A colleague in the financial sector pointed to my attention a speech that the Comptroller of the Currency – John Duggan – has recently given where he expressed some serious concerns about the growth of exotic mortgages […]

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Recession watch: Krugman edition

Paul Krugman is in the bears’ camp for 2007 (thanks to Economist’s View for posting NYT Select content): Economic Storm Signals … Before I explain what the bond market is telling us, let’s talk about why the economy may be at a turning point. Between mid-2003 and mid-2006, economic growth in the United States was fueled mainly by a huge […]

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The R Word

That sinking feeling is coming on. The US economy is slowing and several well-respected economists have made their call. Leading off, Paul Krugman: The key point is that the forces that caused a recession five years ago never went away. Business spending hasn’t really recovered from the slump it went into after the technology bubble burst… Also, the trade deficit […]

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Lots of kindling

Are we headed towards a recession in 2007? Housing markets have begun to turn, interest rates are back where they were pre-9/11 and oil is near $80 a barrel. Nouriel Roubini puts the risk of a US recession at 50% for 2007. I like this approach – no one can predict the future so we must think ahead in terms […]

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