{"id":54509,"date":"2020-08-01T07:24:51","date_gmt":"2020-08-01T12:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54509"},"modified":"2020-08-01T07:25:48","modified_gmt":"2020-08-01T12:25:48","slug":"weekly-commentary-precarious-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54509","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Commentary: Precarious World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Weekly Commentary: Precarious World<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Another fascinating \u2013 if not comforting – week. A Friday Wall Street Journal headline: \u201cBig Tech\u2019s Embarrassment of Riches – Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google all show resilience during pandemic while undergoing congressional scrutiny.\u201d Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google all reported booming earnings the day following Wednesday appearances by respective CEOs before the House Antitrust Subcommittee hearing. Down the road from Capitol Hill, the FOMC released their post-meeting policy statement. Chairman Powell conducted a virtual press conference where he addressed key issues: \u201cinflation running well below our symmetric 2% objective,\u201d and \u201cinequality as an issue has been a growing issue in our country and in our economy for four decades.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it is true that inequality has been building for decades, this trend has worsened markedly since the 2008 crisis. Much more so of late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Powell: \u201cSo [inequality is] a serious economic problem for the United States, but it\u2019s got underlying causes that are not related to monetary policy or to our response to the pandemic. Again, four decades of evidence suggests it’s about globalization, it\u2019s about the flattening out of educational attainment in the United States compared to our other competitor countries. It\u2019s about technology advancing too.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we could chart \u201cinequality,\u201d it would at this point be rising parabolically \u2013 following the trajectory of the Fed\u2019s balance sheet. I had been assuming Fed holdings would at some point be getting a lot larger. It seemed clear inequality would only get worse. COVID dramatically accelerated both trends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bubble analysis is these days as fruitful as ever. We\u2019re in the waning days of a multi-decade super-cycle. Bubble markets have become extraordinarily distorted and increasingly disorderly. Protracted deep structural maladjustment has fostered pervasive Bubble Economy Dynamics. Aggressive monetary inflation and central bank market interventions \u2013 primary contributors to financial and economic Bubbles \u2013 are being deployed to hold Bubble collapse at bay. And we\u2019re now witnessing the initial consequences of desperately throwing massive stimulus at speculative market Bubbles and a Bubble Economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Weekly Commentary: Precarious World Another fascinating \u2013 if not comforting – week. A Friday Wall Street Journal headline: \u201cBig Tech\u2019s Embarrassment of Riches – Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google all show resilience during pandemic while undergoing congressional scrutiny.\u201d Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google all reported booming earnings the day following Wednesday appearances by respective CEOs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[9336,7756,16861,425,861],"class_list":["post-54509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-big-tech","tag-credit-bubble-bulletin","tag-doug-noland","tag-inequality","tag-wall-street-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54510,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54509\/revisions\/54510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}