The Gold Standard  

There has been some discussion on why (and not whether) economists missed seeing the crisis coming. I came across this report but I thought most points were already covered in popular discourse/debate on the failure of models, reliance on one single metric of risk (VaR), etc.
But, for the sake of completeness, here is the link to [...]

Professor Arvind Subramanian at Harvard wrote this piece a month ago. But, thanks to a visit to Prof. Dani Rodrik’s blog, I chanced upon this only today. I am not so sanguine about the absence of backlash against market-economics in the developing world. But, I must concede that the chance that he speask to more [...]

The dessert – the Fed chairman
 The Gold Standard (TGS) does not believe that history repeats itself exactly, much less, economic history. So, TGS won’t bet on Japan’s deflationary outcome being repeated in the U.S. even though in many other respects, the US has taken many leaves out of Japan’s book.
That said, premature paeans are being [...]

Extra serving: the battle continues in Op-Eds
 It may be a digression but Gold Standard (TGS) must record here the profound distaste he felt when he first read the ‘triumphalist’ Chimerica piece by NF and a co-author. It appeared to have been written in the early part of 2007 but appeared in a journal in December [...]

Main course 2 – joint serving by both
What is interesting is that PK himself provides a possible angle.

The only thing that might drive up interest rates—and this is a real concern (emphasis mine) – is that people may grow dubious about the financial solvency of governments.

NF was quick to latch on to that:

Well, if [...]

Main Course 1 – served by Niall Ferguson
Here is where you can find the transcript of the panel discussion.
This is what NF said in that panel discussion:

There is a clear contradiction between these two policies, and we’re trying to have it both ways. You can’t be a monetarist and a Keynesian simultaneously—at least I can’t [...]

The appetizer – ‘Crowding out’
It all started with Krugman (PK) posting this on his blog. He sighs, expresses exasperation with Niall Ferguson’s ‘ignorance’ and alludes to some ‘dark age of macro-economics’. Strong stuff. Link here.
In fact, there is some history to this. PK, perhaps, was having this at the back of his mind when [...]

Jeff Rubin’s new book, ‘Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller?” (blogged here at the Economix blog page of New York Times) sounds quite interesting and its central thesis is highly plausible. High oil prices can reverse globalization and it could hasten the return of manufacturing to North America and Britain, etc.  [...]

… www.baselinescenario.com. I do not have to write any foreword for these two links – one on ‘Banks tunnelling and the risk of inflation’ and the other on banks buying toxic assets from each other.
In fact, Simon Johnson does a very good job of showing why banks’ behaviour risks provoking inflation in the US.
Of course, [...]

Six months after (?!!) announcing its stimulus, China has announced details of its funding, reports Caijing.  Now, how do we square this news with this one from FT ten days ago which said that local governments were unable to raise their share of financing, citing the National Audit Office?
I like the way Bloomberg begins this [...]