And some unanswered questions. From Jeffry Frieden, “A Classic Foreign Debt Crisis,” The Political Economist 12 (2) (Fall 2010) [newsletter of the Political Economy section of APSA, not online]:
Much of the popular, and scholarly, analysis of the crisis has focused
on its financial aspects: the breakdown of financial markets, the malfunction
of financial innovations, the failure of financial regulation. …
I’ve just completed a new research paper that surveys the history of the oil industry with a particular focus on the events associated with significant changes in the price of oil. Here I report the paper’s summary of oil market disruptions and economic downturns since the Second World War. Every recession (with one exception) was preceded by an increase in oil prices, and every oil market disruption (with one exception) was followed by an economic recession.
Or, at least one session’s worth of recent thinking on the topic.
Presiding: Philippe Bacchetta (University of Lausanne)
A research paper by Eyal Dvir of Boston College and Ken Rogoff of Harvard suggests some interesting parallels between the recent behavior of oil prices and what was observed at the very beginning of the industry. I’ve been doing some related research on the history of the oil industry that looks into the events behind historical oil price shocks. Here I describe the first oil shock, which occurred a century and a half ago.
From Reuven Glick and Kevin Lansing, Consumers and the Economy: Household Credit and Personal Saving:
In the years since the bursting of the housing bubble, the personal saving rate has trended up from around 1% to around 6%, while the ratio of household debt to disposable income has dropped from 130% to 118%. Changes over time in the availability of credit to households can explain 90% of the variance of the saving rate since the mid-1960s, including the recent uptrend, according to a simple empirical model.
There might seem to be some conflicting signals from Friday’s employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But I see a uniform message in the various numbers– the economic recovery remains disappointingly weak.
The results from the triennial BIS forex survey are out. Unsurprisingly, trading volume continues to rise, the dollar retains its dominance in forex transactions, and the dollar/euro currency pair is the most heavily traded. But, notably, algorithmic trading is on the rise.
The decision to raise the debt ceiling will be the first test of whether the Republicans can move from tree shaking to jelly making.
The Republican members on the FCIC released a Financial Crisis Primer that has been debunked by a number of observers (since so many of the old canards were hauled out, this was easily accomplished). [0] [1] But the refusal to allow the phrase “Wall Street” in the final commission report [2] impelled me to quantify the attempts by Wall Street to influence financial legislation in the years leading up to the financial crisis.
Don Boudreaux and Mark Perry are among those who regard John Tierney’s claims of energy cornucopia to be persuasive.