There’s a new monetary theory doing the rounds here which claims to be revolutionary: the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT. Not to be confused with the Market Monetary Theory). I agree with some of its points. But when some of its supporters say the state deficit and debt are not important – that they don’t have damaging consequences – the theory becomes a huge deliberate fallacy.
I believe central banks don’t control long-term rates – which are decisive for investment – and that they can influence them in what we would call normal circumstances, namely when GDP is expanding and inflation is at its optimum level. The central bank trys to control the private market’s expectations, but it doesn’t always succeed.
Is gold really the best hedge against risk and should we go back to the gold standard? Gold has been stable for a century, but in the last 50 years it has appreciated a lot, seeing a lot of volatility.
I don’t have the slightest doubt that Draghi is going to do the impossible to keep the euro, but it doesn’t depend on him. The euro is a false project which should have happened when things were more settled, in other words, as Draghi says, “when there was a single market.”
As the global outlook improves, many people ask what’s happened to Larry Summer’s hypothesis of Secular Stagnation, which says there are clear signs that the economic world has been “cooling down” for decades. And currently, everything seems to make us think that the recovery we have on our doorstep is not going to be strong or long-lasting.
Without its own demography and without immigration, it’s impossible for the Trump administration’s forecast for annual US GDP growth of 3.5% over the next years to be met.
With his policies, particularly protectionism, Trump is about to throw the US’ world leadership in the bin. He sold an illusion to his voters since the industrial jobs which disappeared with globalisation and technology will not return. What is clear is that the consequences will hurt us all.
Spain can’t imitate Germany in a context in which Europe is a closed zone where countries export to each other. And Spain is unlikely to become another Germany because the Spanish production model is still based on low productivity.
We have seen how the public debt figures are being manipulated downward, and now we’re going to see how there are also manipulations in Spanish GDP, but this time they are upward. From this we can infer that the ratio of debt/GDP, which is a crucial figure for the health of any economy, is seriously undervalued.
There are some items of Spanish public debt which are eliminated from Bank of Spain’s accounts, reducing the total figure. In other words, 450 billion euros ignored. Basically, what is being removed is public companies’ debt, the debt issued by a public institution in the hands of another public institution, as well as other adjustments, which really should not be discounted.