Categories
Economics

Death to Pennies

Inflation erodes the value of real currency ECONOMISTS tend to favour a small positive rate of inflation, and there are 4 reasons why this makes sense: Labour market flexibility: inflation allows relative real wages to adjust even if nominal wages do not move.  A company that tries to pay workers less money is likely to meet […]

Categories
Economics

The Fed is Europe’s new dealer

Europe may not go to rehab before it is too late THE US Federal Reserve took steps yesterday to make it easier for European banks to borrow and lend dollars. The Fed is now providing such cheap money to Europe that the European Central Bank can borrow from the Fed at lower interest rates than American banks. The […]

Categories
Economics

Europe: a house of cards

EUROPEAN leaders have tried to characterise the October writedown of Greek debt as “private-sector involvement”. While the writedown would appear to be a default in all but name, efforts to maintain investor confidence have so far been surprisingly successful. Yesterday, US stocks and Asian stocks rallied amid optimism that European leaders are taking steps to […]