Every G-7 or G-20 meeting homage is paid to the idea of free markets via the market driven value of each nation’s currency. This is hogwash of the highest order in the world of central bank asset purchase programs. The clarion call is that QE is a domestic-based program meant to meet the inflation target set by the nation’s policy makers and any impact on a nation’s currency is just unintended consequences of keeping a country out of a potential disinflationary cycle. Every central bank statement except the U.S. has a sentence or two about the relative value of a nation’s currency and if too strong then concern about a strong currency being a headwind in meeting the illusion and capriciousness of that 2% inflation target.
Posts Tagged ‘negative real yields’
Notes From Underground: An Open Letter To the G-7
June 2, 2021Notes From Underground: Sanctions Are Sanctimonious
May 2, 2021In today’s world of DOLLAR domination it is easy for the U.S. Treasury — under the guidance of the president — to place sanctions on many different global actors as they strive to use the conduit of SWIFT and other banking facilities to move money around the globe. The U.S. likes to beat its chest and proclaim that it is operating in a rules-based system and therefore sanctions are an appropriate tool in response to the malevolent actions of autocratic-oriented nationalistic actors. But whose rules? And the invocation of sanctions leads to those subject to the whims of U.S. policy to find ways to operate in international grey areas of commerce.
Notes From Underground: A Review of Nehru Versus Nairu
May 11, 2017Yesterday, Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren filled the airwaves with talk about the FED to be more aggressive in raising rates in order to prevent wage inflation from curtailing the current expansion. The continued concern from Wall Street about the POSSIBILITY of wage inflation because of FULL EMPLOYMENT reflects on the flaws in central bank’s models. Nairu (non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment) is so 1970s, when globalization was just beginning and private sector unions had genuine bargaining power. The end of the Cold War unleashed hundreds of millions of workers to compete with workers in the highly developed and advanced economies. The fall of the Berlin Wall pressured even the strong German unions as the fear of jobs moving to Eastern Europe resulted in Social Democrat Gerhard Schroeder initiating the Hartz IV labor reforms which resulted in stagnant wages in return for some job security.