Category: Economics

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Economics Politics & government

[2469] The United States of Europe, on the way

There are several stages of economic integration.

Free trade agreement is probably the lowest of all integrations. It seeks just free flow of capital and labor across borders.

The next step is either custom or monetary union together with a common market. Member states surrender monetary policy to a central authority while maintaining independent fiscal policy. Trade duties are harmonized across the union.

The next stage is fiscal union where individual governments cede their power over fiscal policy to a central authority.

The European Union is on the verge of becoming a fiscal union, making history less than just two decades after adopting a monetary union in all of its sense. Today at an important summit, a majority of European leaders voted for stricter fiscal deficit rules. They believed the best way to solve the debt crisis is to integrate further. Integration will eliminate the crisis of confidence Europe currently suffers from, much like how a troubled California will not trouble the United States by much.

This integrationist logic is persistent among Europeans. When Europe suffered from a serious currency crisis long ago, the then European leaders thought the best way to eliminate volatility between currencies that adversely affected trade in Europe was to have a monetary union.

This is really a big jump. Usually, debates on exchange rate mechanism gyrates between floating or fixed regime. Europe chose to not only have a fixed regime, they chose a fixed regime by marriage. You cannot get a more fixed regime than a monetary union.

Now, the thinking is that the best way to address the debt crisis to have a fiscal union.

Yes, it is an exaggeration to call the recent development in Europe as outright fiscal union. But the new agreement is a big push towards that direction, towards the United States of Europe.

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Economics

[2466] Too much chocolate can be a bad thing

The auction attracted enough bids to sell all of the bonds on offer, thus avoiding failure. Yet the avoidance of failure is different from success. Italy will pay an interest rate of almost 6.3% on the bonds, the highest since 1997, according to Bloomberg. What is more, the rate is almost a full percentage point higher than the one the country had to offer in an auction a month ago. With enough successful auctions such as this one, Italy will be on a path to bankruptcy. [Super Mario vs the Bond Vigilantes. Free Exchange. November 15 2011]

I laughed after reading the last sentence.

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Economics

[2462] With a fail-safe, no reason for supercommittee compromise

The failure of the supercommittee to agree on the distribution of US budget cut is not much of a news. It has been expected. Leaks of how difficult it was to reach a common ground made it way to news reports .

More importantly, the impact of the failure is not too big because the fail-safe automatic cut is going to happen anyway. Both the unsurprising result and the minimal impact of the failure are signified through the low level of attention given by the media on the issue. Focus on the failure is not nearly as intense as focus on the earlier downgrade of US debt by S&P’s.

In retrospect, the fail-safe mechanism is a brilliant political maneuver. It was a result of uneven bargaining where deficit hawks, perhaps irresponsibly, held the US government at random and squeezed as much juice as possible out of the situation. Default or cut it. It was a Hobson’s choice: default was out of the question. And now here we are with the fail-safe mechanism.

While the fail-safe mechanism now ensures the implementation of the USD1.2 trillion budget cut over the next 10 years, it may have also contributed to the failure of compromise. If the members of the supercommittee — whom belongs to competing political parties and we know they serve their political bias — know the cut is going to happen anyway with its distribution already apportioned, why compromise when a compromise angers your voters base?

In a way, the supercommittee is really a lame duck committee. No incentive to action with every incentive to do nothing.

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Economics

[2461] The unexpected 5.8% growth

The GDP growth number for Malaysia shown on the Bloomberg machine surprised me. I had expected somewhere between 4.0% and 5.0%.

Trade numbers had been very good for the fast few months but I did not expect it to push the GDP growth figure close to 6%. In fact, I watched in awe the growth of the trade numbers given the current confusing state of the world’s economy.

For the GDP figures themselves, the year-on-year growth for the third quarter was 5.8%. The average growth expected by economists listed on Bloomberg was 4.8%. This number had progressively grown over the past months from a number close to 4.0% to what it is now.

Looking at the numbers sweepingly and superficially, government spending grew the largest percentage wise. It grew close to 22%. In terms of absolute value, consumption grew the largest and indeed, it was the main contributor to most of the GDP growth.

I am tempted to say the consumption growth was related to government spending (since the separation between government and the private sector is not so clear cut) but without the energy to mine for that, I will refrain from making more courageous statement.

But what exactly is the driver behind the consumption? In my head, I can only think of government. If I want to know more, I clearly need to dig deeper into the numbers.

Was the growth due to base effect? I do not believe so. Base effect is not a convincing case in post-recovery period. Year 2010 had been a year of normalization and year 2011 grew from a somewhat normalized base. So, I am discounting base effect from explaining the unexpected high growth rate.

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Economics Humor

[2460] Prof Dan on the Daily Show!

That is my former econometrics professor at Michigan, the famed Daniel Hamermesh! And he was on the Daily Show!