Bulls, Bears & Bucks #68 : De impotente FED in een dubbeldip

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Op dinsdag 12 oktober 2010 23:05 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:

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Ik denk dat het toch verstandig is een term voor één betekenis te reserveren. Dat werkt wel zo makkelijk en is volgens mij ook een goed gebruik dat men in andere takken van wetenschap toepast. Een natuurkundige spreekt ook niet van temperatuur als hij volume bedoeld. Inflatie is een term uit de monetaire economie en moet dus slaan op de ontwikkeling van de geldhoeveelheid, als deze toeneemt is er dan per definitie sprake van inflatie. Echter inflatie leidt niet per definitie tot prijsstijgingen, prijsstijgingen ontstaan niet spontaan, economische actoren moeten reageren op de verwatering van de ruilwaarde van geld als gevolg van inflatie door hogere prijzen te gaan rekenen. Betekenis 1 is dus domweg fout, want iedere econoom weet dat prijsstijgingen ook voort kunnen komen uit belastingheffing of veranderingen tussen vraag en aanbod. Het is bezijden de waarheid om al die oorzaken op één hoop te gooien. En ik kan mij er best aan irriteren, als economen zo onzorgvuldig met hun eigen terminologie omgaan zal er nooit aan waarheidsvinding gedaan kunnen worden in de economische wetenschap.

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Op dinsdag 12 oktober 2010 23:12 schreef sitting_elfling het volgende:
Veel economische boeken op micro en macro niveau spreken elkaar gewoon tegen. Ook over de manier waarop jij hier inflatie bespreekt.

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Op dinsdag 12 oktober 2010 23:18 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:

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Ja, en op die manier blijft het aanmodderen en moeten we de echte serieuze wetenschap toch aan de natuurkundigen, scheikundigen en wiskundigen overlaten. Daar sta je dan met je economische master.

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Op dinsdag 12 oktober 2010 23:25 schreef sitting_elfling het volgende:

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Dat maakt verder niet uit als jij een carriere in de economische/finance tak zoekt. Dat je niet serieus wordt genomen door andere academici zal je dan toch een rotzorg zijn?

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Op dinsdag 12 oktober 2010 23:25 schreef sitting_elfling het volgende:

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Dat maakt verder niet uit als jij een carriere in de economische/finance tak zoekt. Dat je niet serieus wordt genomen door andere academici zal je dan toch een rotzorg zijn?

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Op dinsdag 12 oktober 2010 23:32 schreef Perrin het volgende:

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Welkom in de economische twilight zone

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Op dinsdag 12 oktober 2010 23:38 schreef sitting_elfling het volgende:
Maar ik zie het ook meer als onkunde van de andere academici dat ze 'ons' niet serieus willen nemen.

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Op dinsdag 12 oktober 2010 23:38 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:

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Iedereen heeft baat bij een gezonde economische wetenschap hoor. Ik hou mij overigens met een heel andere tak van sport bezig dan moneraire economie of finance, ik doe vervoerseconomie.

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Op dinsdag 12 oktober 2010 23:42 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:

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Zolang bijvoorbeeld inflatie voor meerdere betekenissen wordt gebruikt vind ik het juist geheel op z'n plaats dat ze de economische wetenschap niet serieus nemen. Ook het gebrek aan wiskundig bewijzen van theorieën is schrijnend.

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Op dinsdag 12 oktober 2010 23:48 schreef sitting_elfling het volgende:

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Het valt anders vies tegen om economische zaken wiskundig te onderleggen. Ik vind het veel erger dat ze zo vast houden aan oude troep van Keynes bijvoorbeeld

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Steunmaatregelen Fed 'binnen afzienbare tijd' Uitgegeven: 12 oktober 2010 21:01
Laatst gewijzigd: 12 oktober 2010 21:07

WASHINGTON - De Federal Reserve (Fed), het stelsel van Amerikaanse centrale banken, voorziet de noodzaak om ''binnen afzienbare tijd'' met extra steunmaatregelen te komen om de afzwakkende economie een impuls te geven.

© ANPDat meldt de Fed in dinsdag gepubliceerde notulen.

Wat voor maatregelen er mogelijk genomen gaan worden heeft het beleidsbepalende orgaan niet bekendgemaakt. De centrale bankiers zijn het wel over een breed front eens over de noodzaak van de stappen.

Op de financiële markten werd al weken druk gespeculeerd over de stimuleringsmaatregelen. Door de hoop dat de centrale bank opnieuw geld in de economie gaat pompen om de groei te waarborgen, gingen de aandelen- en obligatiemarkten de laatste weken scherp omhoog. Ook dinsdag kozen de Amerikaanse beurzen de weg omhoog na het nieuws van de Fed.

Geen effect

De Fed verlaagde de rente in december 2008 naar bijna nul procent en pompte tot dusver 1,7 biljoen dollar (1,2 biljoen euro) in de economie. Dat heeft wel geleid tot enige economische groei, maar veel minder sterk dan in voorgaande jaren.

Op de werkgelegenheid lijken de ingrepen helemaal geen effect te hebben. Nog altijd is bijna 10 procent van de Amerikaanse beroepsbevolking werkloos.

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Op woensdag 13 oktober 2010 09:45 schreef simmu het volgende:

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alles is wiskundig te onderleggen tenzij het niet onderlegbaar is.

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Op woensdag 13 oktober 2010 09:45 schreef simmu het volgende:

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alles is wiskundig te onderleggen tenzij het niet onderlegbaar is.

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Op woensdag 13 oktober 2010 15:41 schreef Basp1 het volgende:
Ook de psychische variabele moet te modeleren zijn, maar dat is een heel stuk moeilijker.

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Op woensdag 13 oktober 2010 15:44 schreef sitting_elfling het volgende:


Economie is nu eenmaal niet een exacte wetenschap zoals Wiskunde.

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Op woensdag 13 oktober 2010 15:44 schreef sitting_elfling het volgende:
Economie is nu eenmaal niet een exacte wetenschap zoals Wiskunde.

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Op woensdag 13 oktober 2010 16:17 schreef Bolkesteijn het volgende:

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Dat vind ik altijd zo'n laf statement (nofi hoor ), we kunnen het niet, dus we zeggen dat economie niet met exacte wetenschap te vergelijken is. Het is absolute kolder, economen hebben het gewoon wat minder makkelijk als het gaat om het doen van metingen enzovoort, maar dat kan geen reden zijn om dan maar van de wiskundige benadering af te zien. Zonder model er bij kan iedereen wat opschrijven, het is wiskunde dat je dwingt om precies te zijn in je definities en dat er voor zorgt dat er altijd een logische benadering bestaat.

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Op woensdag 13 oktober 2010 15:41 schreef Basp1 het volgende:
Ook de psychische variabele moet te modeleren zijn, maar dat is een heel stuk moeilijker.

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How to stop a currency war
Keep calm, don’t expect quick fixes and above all don’t unleash a trade fight with China

Oct 14th 2010

IN RECENT weeks the world economy has been on a war footing, at least rhetorically. Ever since Brazil’s finance minister, Guido Mantega, declared on September 27th that an “international currency war” had broken out, the global economic debate has been recast in battlefield terms, not just by excitable headline-writers, but by officials themselves. Gone is the fuzzy rhetoric about co-operation to boost global growth. A more combative tone has taken hold (see article). Countries blame each other for distorting global demand, with weapons that range from quantitative easing (printing money to buy bonds) to currency intervention and capital controls.

Behind all the smoke and fury, there are in fact three battles. The biggest one is over China’s unwillingness to allow the yuan to rise more quickly. American and European officials have sounded tougher about the “damaging dynamic” caused by China’s undervalued currency. Last month the House of Representatives passed a law allowing firms to seek tariff protection against countries with undervalued currencies, with a huge bipartisan majority. China’s “unfair” trade practices have become a hot topic in the mid-term elections.

A second flashpoint is the rich world’s monetary policy, particularly the prospect that central banks may soon restart printing money to buy government bonds. The dollar has fallen as financial markets expect the Federal Reserve to act fastest and most boldly. The euro has soared as officials at the European Central Bank show least enthusiasm for such a shift. In China’s eyes (and, sotto voce, those of many other emerging-market governments), quantitative easing creates a gross distortion in the world economy as investors rush elsewhere, especially into emerging economies, in search of higher yields.

A third area of contention comes from how the developing countries respond to these capital flows. Rather than let their exchange rates soar, many governments have intervened to buy foreign currency, or imposed taxes on foreign capital inflows. Brazil recently doubled a tax on foreign purchases of its domestic debt. This week Thailand announced a new 15% withholding tax for foreign investors in its bonds.


Jaw-jaw, please

For now, these skirmishes fall far short of a real currency war. Many of the “weapons” look less menacing on closer inspection. The capital-inflow controls are modest. In the rich world only Japan has recently resorted to currency intervention, and so far only once. Nor is there much risk of an imminent descent into trade retaliation. Even in America, tariffs against China are still, with luck, a long way off—both because the currency bill is milder than it sounds and because it has yet to be passed by the Senate or signed by Barack Obama.

Still, there is no room for complacency. Today’s phoney war could quickly turn into a real dogfight. The conditions driving the divergence of economic policies—in particular, sluggish growth in the rich world—are likely to last for years. As fiscal austerity kicks in, the appeal of using a cheaper currency as a source of demand will increase, and the pressure on politicians to treat China as a scapegoat will rise. And if the flood of foreign capital intensifies, developing countries may be forced to choose between losing competitiveness, truly draconian capital controls or allowing their economies to overheat.

What needs to happen is fairly clear. Global demand needs rebalancing, away from indebted rich economies and towards more spending in the emerging world. Structural reforms to boost spending in those surplus economies will help, but their real exchange rates also need to appreciate. And, yes, the Chinese yuan is too low (see article). That is hurting not just the West but also other emerging countries (especially those with floating exchange rates) and indeed China itself, which needs to get more of its growth from domestic consumption.

It is also clear that this will not be a painless process. China is right to worry about instability if workers in exporting companies lose their jobs. And even reasonable choices—such as the rich world’s mix of fiscal austerity and loose monetary policy—will have an uncomfortable impact on small, open emerging economies, in the form of unwelcome capital inflows. This flood of capital will be less devastating to them than the harm they would suffer if the West descended into deflation and stagnation, but it can still cause problems.


Collective Seoul-searching

All this cries out for a multilateral approach, in which institutions such as the IMF and the G20 forge consensus among the big economies. The hitch is that the multilateral route has, so far, achieved little. Hence the chorus calling for a different line of attack—one that focuses on getting tough with China, through either retaliatory capital controls (such as not allowing China to buy American Treasury bonds) or trade sanctions. And it is not just the usual protectionist suspects: even some free-traders reckon that economic violence is the only way to shock China out of its self-harming obstinacy (and to stop a more widespread protectionist reaction later).

This newspaper is not convinced. The threats look like either unworkable bluffs (how can China be stopped from buying Treasuries, the most widely traded asset in the world’s financial markets?) or dangerous provocations. Confronted with a trade ultimatum, the Beijing regime, puffed up in its G2 hubris, may well reckon it is cheaper politically to retaliate to the United States in kind. That is how trade wars start.

Anyway, to focus on America and China is to misunderstand the nature of the problem. The currency wars are about more than one villain and one victim. Rather, redouble multilateral efforts behind the scenes, especially by bringing in the emerging countries hurt by China’s policy. Brazil and others have only just begun to speak out. South Korea is hosting the G20 next month. Use the Seoul summit as a prompt, not to create some new Plaza Accord (today’s tensions are too complex to settle in a grand peace treaty of the sort hammered out by just five countries in New York in 1985) but as a way to clarify the debate and keep up the pressure. It will get fewer headlines; but this is a war that is best averted, not fought.

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Op woensdag 13 oktober 2010 16:22 schreef simmu het volgende:
statistiek is toch ook wiskunde.......

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Robo-signers: Mortgage experience not necessary

NEW YORK – In an effort to rush through thousands of home foreclosures since 2007, financial institutions and their mortgage servicing departments hired hair stylists, Walmart floor workers and people who had worked on assembly lines and installed them in "foreclosure expert" jobs with no formal training, a Florida lawyer says.

In depositions released Tuesday, many of those workers testified that they barely knew what a mortgage was. Some couldn't define the word "affidavit." Others didn't know what a complaint was, or even what was meant by personal property. Most troubling, several said they knew they were lying when they signed the foreclosure affidavits and that they agreed with the defense lawyers' accusations about document fraud.

"The mortgage servicers hired people who would never question authority," said Peter Ticktin, a Deerfield Beach, Fla., lawyer who is defending 3,000 homeowners in foreclosure cases. As part of his work, Ticktin gathered 150 depositions from bank employees who say they signed foreclosure affidavits without reviewing the documents or ever laying eyes on them — earning them the name "robo-signers."

The deposed employees worked for the mortgage service divisions of banks such as Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, as well as for mortgage servicers like Litton Loan Servicing, a division of Goldman Sachs.

Ticktin said he would make the testimony available to state and federal agencies that are investigating financial institutions for allegations of possible mortgage fraud. This comes on the eve of an expected announcement Wednesday from 40 state attorneys general that they will launch a collective probe into the mortgage industry.

"This was an industrywide scheme designed to defraud homeowners," Ticktin said.

The depositions paint a surreal picture of foreclosure experts who didn't understand even the most elementary aspects of the mortgage or foreclosure process — even though they were entrusted as the records custodians of homeowners' loans. In one deposition taken in Houston, a foreclosure supervisor with Litton Loan couldn't define basic terms like promissory note, mortgagee, lien, receiver, jurisdiction, circuit court, plaintiff's assignor or defendant. She testified that she didn't know why a spouse might claim interest in a property, what the required conditions were for a bank to foreclose or who the holder of the mortgage note was. "I don't know the ins and outs of the loan, I just sign documents," she said at one point.

Until now, only a handful of depositions from robo-signers have come to light. But the sheer volume of the new depositions will make it more difficult for financial institutions to argue that robo-signing was an aberrant practice in a handful of rogue back offices.

Judges are unlikely to look favorably on a bank that claims paperwork flaws don't matter because the borrower was in default on the loan, said Kendall Coffey, a former Miami U.S. attorney and author of the book "Foreclosures."

"There has to be a cornerstone of integrity to the process," Coffey said.

Bank of America responded to Tiktin's depositions by re-affirming that an internal review has shown that its foreclosures have been accurate. "This review will ensure we have a full understanding of any potential issues and quickly address them," Bank of America spokesman Dan Frahm said. Frahm added that, on average, the bank's foreclosure customers have not made a payment in more than 18 months.

JP Morgan Chase spokesman Thomas Kelly said the bank has requested that courts not enter into any judgments until the bank had reviewed its procedures. But Kelly added that the bank believes that all the underlying facts of the cases involved in the document fraud allegations are true.

Litton Loan Servicing did not respond to a request for comment.

Even before the foreclosure scandal broke, the housing market was in the midst of an ugly detoxification. Now the escalating crisis is likely to prolong the housing depression for at least another few years. The allegations are opening the entire chain of foreclosure proceedings to legal challenge. Some foreclosures could be overturned. Others could be deemed illegal.

For a housing recovery to occur, all the foreclosed properties — which could account for 40 percent of all residential sales by 2012 — need to be re-scrutinized by the banks and resold on the market. Now, with so much inventory under a legal threat, the process will become severely delayed.

"This just adds more uncertainty to the whole mortgage process, so buyers are asking themselves: do I want to buy a home in this environment?" says Cris deRitis, director of credit analytics at Moody's Analytics. "We need to fix these issues before the economy can recover."

Though some have chalked up the foreclosure debacle to an overblown case of paperwork bungling, the underlying legal issues are far more serious. Yes, swearing that you've reviewed documents you've never seen is a legal offense. But at the center of the foreclosure scandal looms something much larger: the question of who actually owns the loans and who has the right to foreclose upon them. The paperwork issues being raised by lawyers and attorneys generals have the potential to blight not just the titles of foreclosed properties but also those belonging to homeowners who have never missed a mortgage payment.

So far, JP Morgan Chase, PNC Financial and Litton Loan Servicing have stopped some foreclosure proceedings in 23 states. Bank of America and GMAC, recently renamed Ally, have extended their moratoriums to all 50 states. Wells Fargo and Citigroup have said they are continuing with foreclosures, adding that they are confident in their documents and processes.

But Citigroup has now backpedaled some on that assertion. The bank sent out a press release Tuesday that it was no longer using the law firm of "foreclosure king" David Stern, now under investigation by the Florida attorney general's office. "Pending the outcome of the AG's investigation, Citi is not referring new matters to this firm," the bank said in an e-mailed statement.

Late last week, in an interview with the Florida attorney general, a former senior paralegal in Stern's firm described a boiler-room atmosphere in which employees were pressured to forge signatures, backdate documents, swap Social Security numbers, inflate billings and pass around notary stamps as if they were salt.

Stern's lawyer, Jeffrey Tew, did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, the public outrage continues to mount. In what is perhaps a sign of things to come, a Simi Valley, Calif., couple and their nine children broke into their foreclosed home over the weekend and moved back in, according to television station KABC of Simi Valley. The couple, Jim and Danielle Earl, say they were working with the bank to catch up on payments until they discovered a $25,000 difference between what they owed and what the bank said they owed. The family was evicted from their Spanish-style two-story in July. The home has been sold, and the new owner was due to move in soon.

The Earls and their attorney now allege that they were victims of fraudulent paperwork.

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Op donderdag 14 oktober 2010 20:13 schreef SemperSenseo het volgende:

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Ken je de uitspraak niet:

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics"
(Benjamin Disraeli)

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Op donderdag 14 oktober 2010 20:13 schreef SemperSenseo het volgende:

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Ken je de uitspraak niet:

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics"
(Benjamin Disraeli)