Home » Posts tagged 'charles gave'
Tag Archives: charles gave
Not Modern, Not About Money, and Not Really Much of a Theory
NOT MODERN, NOT ABOUT MONEY, AND NOT REALLY MUCH OF A THEORY
“Ignoring MMT’s rising popularity would be about as smart (and effective) as a dog barking at the waves in the ocean.”
–KEVIN MUIR, author of the avant garde financial newsletter, The Macro Tourist
“I believe that all good things taken to an extreme become self-destructive and that everything must evolve or die. This is now true for capitalism.”
–RAY DALIO, founder of hedge fund behemoth, Bridgewater Associates
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
INTRODUCTION
The final lap. It’s hard to believe that as recently as February, when I first brought up the concept of a new economic model that was poised to radically alter the world we’re living in, MMT was as obscure as an extra in an old Cecil B. DeMille bible film. Yet, a mere two months later, you have to try extremely hard to ignore Modern Monetary Theory and its swelling number of disciples.
Perhaps at this point, some of you who have read the three previous installments of our month-long series on MMT wish I’d never brought it your attention. You might even think it’s such a zany idea that it will never see the light of day. If so, you could be right—but I doubt it.
Prior issues of this series have made the point that ultra-low and, even, negative interest rates have led to a boom in asset prices at the expense of the real economy. This has created the most lop-sided income distortion since 1929.
Source: Grant Williams, TTMYGH (2/10/2019)
Even after 10 years of a long and sluggish expansion—which happily has driven unemployment down to 50-year lows–there is an unmistakable whiff of outrage in the air. The non-1% or, perhaps more accurately, the non-5%, are coming to believe they’ve been stiffed by the reality revealed in the above chart.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Gavekal On The Coming Clash Of Empires: Russia’s Role As A Global Game-Changer
Gavekal On The Coming Clash Of Empires: Russia’s Role As A Global Game-Changer
Carthago Est Delenda
“Carthage must be destroyed”. Cato the elder would conclude his speeches in the Roman Senate with the admonition that salt should be spread on the ruins of Rome’s rival. Listening to the US media over these summer holidays from Grand Lake, Oklahoma, it is hard to escape the conclusion that most of the American media, and US congress, feels the same way about Russia. Which is odd given that the Cold War supposedly ended almost 30 years ago.
But then again, a quick study of history shows that clashes between land and sea-based empires have been a fairly steady constant of Western civilization. Think of Athens versus Sparta, Greece versus Persia, Rome versus Carthage, England versus Napoleon, and more recently the US versus Germany and Japan (when World War II saw the US transform itself from a land-based empire to a sea-based empire in order to defeat Germany and Japan), and of course the more recent contest between the US and the Soviet Union.
The maritime advantage
With this in mind, consider a mental map of the productive land masses in the world today. Very roughly put, the world currently has three important zones of production, with each accounting for about a third of world GDP.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
