Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Ordoliberalism' is associated with 7 posts.

Krugmenistan vs the Permahawks

Lift Off! That was the announce­ment by the Fed­er­al Reserve this week when the world’s biggest and most influ­en­tial cen­tral bank start­ed the long await­ed rais­ing of its bench­mark short-term rate a quar­ter point from near-zero lev­els, mark­ing the first time the Fed has raised rates since 2006. It was big news, except this rate hike was telegraphed for quite a while now and vir­tu­al­ly every­one was expect­ing the Fed to do exact­ly what it did, so it’s not as big as it could have been. If the Fed had decid­ed not to raise rates, despite all the telegraph­ing, that prob­a­bly would have been a big­ger sto­ry. But would it have been a bad sto­ry if the Fed decid­ed to keep rates at their cur­rent near-zero lev­els? There’s a big debate in the eco­nom­ic com­mu­ni­ty over that. And it’s a debate that pits pru­dent econ­o­mists with excel­lent track-records like Paul Krug­man, some­one who opposed the Fed’s Decem­ber “lift off” deci­sion, against the broad array of “per­ma­hawks”. But it’s not just the ques­tion with respect to Fed. The Euro­pean Cen­tral Bank made a pol­i­cy announce­ment this month too regard­ing its stim­u­lus mea­sure and it was indeed rather sur­pris­ing. And as we’re also going to see in this post, it was sur­pris­ing in the way that just might have done seri­ous dam­age to not just the cred­i­bil­i­ty of ECB Pres­i­dent Mario Draghi but the ECB itself. Or at least cred­i­bil­i­ty in the ECB’s com­mit­ment to its sin­gle man­date of keep­ing infla­tion hov­er­ing around 2 per­cent.

To pla­cate per­ma­hawks (to main­tain cred­i­bil­i­ty) or not pla­cate the per­ma­hawks (to main­tain cred­i­bil­i­ty)? That is the ques­tion. Or at least one of the ques­tions cen­tral banks face. Unfor­tu­nate­ly.


FTR #792 Caution: Banksters at Work (More Collateralized “Death” Obligations)

In FTR #772, we looked at a num­ber of sus­pi­cious deaths in and around the finan­cial indus­try, this as a num­ber of legal inves­ti­ga­tions into the mis­deeds of the “banksters” were pro­ceed­ing. This pro­gram updates that extra­or­di­nary mor­tal­i­ty rate. One of the sur­re­al, almost hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry finan­cial instru­ments that were at the cen­ter of the 2008 finan­cial col­lapse were CDO’s–collateralized debt oblig­a­tions. We won­der if the high mor­tal­i­ty rate, the ongo­ing cap­i­tal trou­bles and legal inves­ti­ga­tions plagu­ing the firms may be relat­ed to these deaths. Are we look­ing at col­lat­er­al­ized “death” oblig­a­tions? We note that JP Mor­gan Chase has expe­ri­enced a par­tic­u­lar­ly high mor­tal­i­ty rate.


The New World Ordoliberalism Part 4: Meet the New Plan. Same as the Old Plan. Deregulated.

There have been quite a few devel­op­ments in the euro­zone recent­ly with major pos­si­ble pol­i­cy changes announced in recent weeks. Things like buy­ing bonds to shore up mar­kets and stim­u­late the econ­o­my (“quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing”) are now on the table. Quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing is nor­mal cen­tral bank stuff that has been effec­tive­ly shoved off the table of ECB pol­i­cy options by the Bun­des­bank’s unortho­dox eco­nom­ic the­o­ries until now. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s look­ing like the quan­ti­ta­tive eas­ing is going to be unortho­dox too. No ‘eas­ing’ for the gov­ern­ments. Much ‘eas­ing’ for the banks. And the aus­ter­i­ty con­tin­ues.


Occupy Wall Street–With “Islamanomics”?!

In past posts, we have not­ed the ide­o­log­i­cal under­pin­nings of Adbusters mag­a­zine, which appers to be the gen­e­sis point of the Occu­py Wall Street move­ment. Edi­tor Kalle Las­n’s sug­ges­tion that the world’s poor and dis­en­fran­chised turn to Islam­ic eco­nom­ic and social the­o­ry and prac­tice is price­less, and frankly typ­i­cal of the poor qual­i­ty of the think­ing he man­i­fests. The World Bank–which Lasn criticizes–is overt­ly sym­pa­thet­ic to the cor­po­ratist mod­els upon which the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s eco­nom­ic the­o­ries are pred­i­cat­ed.


The New World Ordoliberalism Part 3: About That Raise You Wanted...

Along with last week’s news of Ger­many’s record trade sur­plus, the open­ing of an EU inves­ti­ga­tion into Ger­many’s grow­ing sur­plus­es, and Europe’s oth­er recent remark­able socioeco­nom­ic achieve­ments, Angela Merkel urged the CDU to com­pro­mise on an across-the-board 8.50 euro Ger­man min­i­mum wage. It’s great news because wage defla­tion is still part of the EU’s long-term agen­da.


The New World Ordoliberalism Part 2: A ‘Third Way’ to Fascism

Ordolib­er­al­ism has long been the eco­nom­ic phi­los­o­phy guid­ing Ger­man pol­i­cy-mak­ers. But with the cre­ation of the euro­zone, ordolib­er­al­ism has qui­et­ly become the default pol­i­cy-stance for the entire zone. This has been hap­pen­ing with lit­tle recog­ni­tion that ordolib­er­al ideas have been play­ing such a pro­found role. And there’s been even less atten­tion paid to the ordolib­er­al phi­los­o­phy itself. Sur­prise! It’s kind of fas­cist. Updat­ed 7/26/2013


Currency Wars: The New World Ordoliberalism

There’s been quite a bit of chat­ter late­ly about the threat of “Cur­ren­cy Wars” amongst glob­al pol­i­cy­mak­ers. It’s part of a larg­er debate over just what kind of eco­nom­ic poli­cies and modes of cen­tral bank­ing should even be philo­soph­i­cal­ly allow­able. The Bun­des­bank has some strong ideas about what gov­ern­ments should and should not be allowed to do with their mon­e­tary and fis­cal poli­cies. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, they’re also bad ideas.