Search Results for: debt

Total, total bullshit”?

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Oh dear. When Nas­sim Khadim from The Age asked me to com­ment yes­ter­dy on the elec­toral asser­tion being made by the Lib­er­al Party–that ris­ing State debt was putting upward pres­sure on inter­est rates–I respond­ed that the asser­tion was:

Total, total bull­shit. It’s like say­ing that some­body dropped a peb­ble into the ocean and that caused a tsuna­mi. And you can quote me on that.”

Well, I expect­ed just to see the “peb­ble and tsuna­mi” anal­o­gy turn up in the report. Instead, I saw the first two sen­tences of the above–and learnt the hard way that edi­to­r­i­al stan­dards at Aus­trali­a’s major dailies are no longer as reserved as I took for grant­ed:

Policy

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I’ll use this page to post doc­u­ments that are inputs to pol­i­cy for­ma­tion.

Sub­mis­sion to the Sen­ate Inquiry into com­pe­ti­tion with­in the Aus­tralian bank­ing sec­tor

I will post my sub­mis­sion short­ly when cleared by the com­mit­tee

QED mod­el to illus­trate that bank prof­its rise as debt is cre­at­ed more quick­ly.

My Sub­mis­sion to the Wal­lis Com­mit­tee in 1996

Sup­ple­men­tary let­ter (after learn­ing from the Com­mit­tee at the Hear­ing that they were con­sid­er­ing allow­ing secu­ri­tised lend­ing).

Talk at Par­lia­men­tary Library Novem­ber 26th 2008 (to be added after the talk)

Post coming shortly

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This is basi­cal­ly an apol­o­gy for a slow update rate on the blog right now. I have had two con­fer­ence trips sep­a­rat­ed by exam mark­ing and stu­dent super­vi­sion loads; and I’m sit­ting in a con­fer­ence right now. I have two Debt­watch reports to post, updates to do to the Charts page, and plen­ty of press cov­er­age details to add, plus at least one com­ment to reply to. They will be forth­com­ing I hope by Fri­day.

The BIS Annual Report: From Goldilocks to the Three Bears

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Pri­or to the NASDAQ crash in ear­ly 2000, Amer­i­can com­men­ta­tors were fond of describ­ing their econ­o­my as being in a “Goldilocks” phase–with all eco­nom­ic indi­ca­tors being “just right”.

That phrase dropped out of cir­cu­la­tion after April 2000, but a lev­el of com­pla­cen­cy still ruled when that stock mar­ket crash appeared to have lit­tle impact on the real econ­o­my.

Com­pla­cen­cy dra­mat­i­cal­ly left the build­ing today, with the release of the Bank of Inter­na­tion­al Set­tle­men­t’s (BIS) 77th Annu­al Report. The BIS turns the Goldilocks sto­ry around, and sees it not from Goldilocks’ per­spec­tive, but from that of the Bears. Just as the Bears’ domes­tic idyll was dis­turbed by Goldilocks the Home Invad­er, the appar­ent­ly neat glob­al finan­cial sys­tem has been put at risk by out of con­trol spec­u­la­tive lend­ing.

First home payments hit $3000 per month

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Jes­si­ca Irvine from the SMH has writ­ten an excel­lent piece with this head­line in today’s SMH. I’ve linked it on the blog roll, but it’s linked here too for quick ref­er­ence.

 My Debt­watch report will be very brief this com­ing month: I’m off to the USA tomor­row for some con­fer­ences, and I’m “under the gun” to pro­duce papers and pre­sen­ta­tions to suit. I also won’t be avail­able for com­ment at the time of the RBA’s next meeting–which is of course high­ly unlike­ly to move rates in either direc­tion.

PM on New Zealand Reserve Bank Policy Shift–transcript

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Will Bud­get tax cuts fuel inflation?  (click here for the MP3 file)
PM — Wednes­day, 9 May , 2007  18:14:52
Reporter: Stephen Long
MARK COLVIN: Now, will the tax cuts in the Bud­get cause infla­tion?

Some lead­ing econ­o­mists argue that the Reserve Bank could be forced to lift inter­est rates down the track because Gov­ern­ment spend­ing and tax cuts will increase con­sump­tion and prices.

But oth­ers dis­agree. They argue that debt lev­els are so high that many peo­ple will be hand­ing their tax cuts straight to the bank.

ABC PM tonight–major policy shift by New Zealand RB?

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Stephen Long from ABC News brought to my atten­tion the fact that the Reserve Bank of New Zealand appears to be con­tem­plat­ing a return to reg­u­lat­ing lend­ing.

This is only hint­ed at at present, but it rep­re­sents a major shift in Cen­tral Bank thinking–and a wel­come one, from a debt-defla­tion­ary point of view.

I’m inter­viewed about it on PM tonight; in the mean­time, here are some rel­e­vant excerpts from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand: Finan­cial Sta­bil­i­ty Report, May 2:

Why have the Liberals got it in for business students?

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This is anoth­er non-debt post. I’ve just heard Costel­lo describe tonight’s bud­get as an “Edu­ca­tion Bud­get”. There was a wel­come “equi­ty” bequest to uni­ver­si­ties, to fund infra­struc­ture and research: but there was also a shal­low “shell and pea” trick in the allo­ca­tion of fund­ing for Uni­ver­si­ty places.

The com­pli­cat­ed CGS band­ing system–which deter­mines what the Gov­ern­men­t pro­vides per stu­dent, and varies depend­ing on the dis­ci­pline being studied–is being ratio­nalised from 14 bands to 7. In 6 of those new bands, the amount being giv­en in 2008 is slight­ly more than the high­est amount giv­en to the pre­vi­ous bands. For instance, the four bands of Maths, Behav­iour­al Sci­ences, Edu­ca­tion and Com­put­ing are being amal­ga­mat­ed into one band; the high­est fund­ing lev­el per stu­dent in 2007 was $8,057 for Com­put­ing, and the low­est $5,381 for Maths; the new fund­ing lev­el is $8,217–a 2% rise for Com­put­ing, and a 52% increase for Maths.

Hell’s Belles

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This post has nothing–well, almost nothing–to do with debt. But this is a blog, right? So I can post what­ev­er I want.

And what I want is for you to see a new play called Hel­l’s Belles–or at least spread the word about it.  It’s a com­e­dy with the under­ly­ing theme of “Be care­ful what you wish for”: two divorcees fan­ta­sis­ing about the ide­al man acci­den­tal­ly con­jure up a demon, who can only leave once he has some­one’s sig­na­ture on a con­tract that offers a wish in return for a soul.

Research

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This page lists and links to my aca­d­e­m­ic papers. If you would like to sup­port my research, please click on this link: Research Fund­ing.

Research Financial Instability and Endogenous Money.

A mon­e­tary Min­sky mod­el of the Great Mod­er­a­tion & the Great Reces­sion. This paper is forth­com­ing in the Jour­nal of Eco­nom­ic Behav­ior and Orga­ni­za­tion. The sim­u­la­tions there are  slight­ly mis­lead­ing since the ini­tial con­di­tions con­tained an incon­sis­ten­cy; these have since been cor­rect­ed to yield the same long term out­come but far less volatile ini­tial fluc­tu­a­tions. I’ll pub­lish the paper with these revised con­di­tions short­ly