Unemployment rates by education in the USA

Trends in labour market freedom in the UK, USA, Germany and France – Index of Economic Freedom rankings

The writers of the Index of Economic Freedom at the Heritage foundation really loves the USA and didn’t think much of the Conservative Party – Liberal Democratic Party coalition government because labour market freedom actually fell in the UK during their administration. Bring back Tony Blair, all is forgiven. The information on their website throws no insight into why this reduction in labour market freedom in Britain happened.

Figure 1: Index of Economic Freedom, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Venezuela, 95 – 2015 image

Source: Index of Economic Freedom 2015.

Fortunately for Germany, labour market freedom increased over the course of the global financial crisis and its aftermath. This helps explains low unemployment in Germany during that period. Nothing much happened in France in regard to labour market freedom.

Greece debt crisis in 90 seconds

A lot of countries borrowed a lot of money recently

John Cochrane on a big hole in the Greek bailout (and media analysis of the bailout)

via The Grumpy Economist: Greece again.

There were large cross-country differences in long-term unemployment duration both before and after the GFC

Unemployment rates across OECD member countries

Greek and US great depressions compared

https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/620570062538309632/photo/1

Financial crises surprisingly common, but few countries close their banks

The left-wing solution to Greek bankruptcy

Why Greece joined the Euro

The roots of Greece’s crisis are simple. Before Greece joined the Eurozone, investors treated it as a middle-income country with poor governance — which is to say, a credit risk.

After Greece joined the Eurozone, investors thought that Greece was no longer a credit risk — they figured, if push came to shove, other Eurozone members like Germany would bail Greece out. They were wrong.

Michael Dooley put forward a theory of speculative attacks on currencies as insurance attacks on currencies for emerging markets after the East Asian financial crisis:

First generation models of speculative attacks show that apparently random speculative attacks on policy regimes can be fully consistent with rational and well-informed speculative behaviour.

Unfortunately, models driven by a conflict between exchange rate policy and other macroeconomic objectives do not seem consistent with important empirical regularities surrounding recent crises in emerging markets. This has generated considerable interest in models that associate crises with self-fulfilling shifts in private expectations.

In this paper we develop a first generation model based on an alternative policy conflict. Credit constrained governments accumulate reserve assets in order to self-insure against shocks to national consumption. Governments also insure poorly regulated domestic financial markets.

Given this policy regime, a variety of internal and external shocks generate capital inflows to emerging markets followed by successful and anticipated speculative attacks.

We argue that a common external shock generated capital inflows to emerging markets in Asia and Latin America after 1989. Country specific factors determined the timing of speculative attacks. Lending policies of industrial country governments and international organizations account for contagion, that is, a bunching of attacks over time.

His model was not within the context of a currency union but his basic theory is correct.

There are speculative attacks on a currency or a bank run after foreign markets revises their estimates of the available central bank reserves and international lines of credit to bail out the banking systems and/or foreign debt.

Michael Dooley was dealing with the emerging economies of Southeast Asia and their official lines of credit that insure their foreign exchange liabilities and domestic banking system. Greece is about lines of credit for similar purposes to other European union member states.

via 12 charts and maps that explain the Greek crisis – Vox and The Most Important Graphs of 2011 – The Atlantic.

The reason why New Zealand should rule out helping Greece!

image

Greece is a tiny part of the European economies so it doesn’t matter that much to the rest of the European Union what happens to Greece. The only people will notice the sovereign default of Greece once the breathless journalism has died down are Greeks themselves as they rebuild their banking and monetary system against a background of a government run by coffee shop Marxists.

Gambling for Redemption and Self-fulfilling Debt Crises in the Eurozone

Sir Humphrey was right on why Britain entered the common market in 1973? Real GDP growth per working age British and French, PPP, detrended, 1950 – 2013

Figure 1: Real GDP per British and French aged 15-64, converted to 2013 price level with updated 2005 EKS purchasing power parities, 1.9 per cent detrended, 1950-2013

image

Source: Computed from OECD Stat Extract and The Conference Board, Total Database, January 2014, http://www.conference-board.org/economics

Figure 2: Real GDP per British and French aged 15-64, converted to 2013 price level with updated 2005 EKS purchasing power parities, 1.9 per cent detrended, base 100 = 1974, 1950-2013

image

Source: Computed from OECD Stat Extract and The Conference Board, Total Database, January 2014, http://www.conference-board.org/economics

In figure 2, a flat line represents annual real GDP growth at a rate of 1.9%, which is the trend rate of annual growth of the USA in the 20th century. A rising line means annual growth at above that trend rate; a falling line means annual growth at below that trend rate of 1.9% per year.

The Spanish economic recovery compared

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