Sunday, April 29, 2012

10 - Monetary Policy, Federal Reserve

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What's all the Yellen About? Monetary Policy and the Federal Reserve: CrCo > .2017 Who Controls All of Our Money? - Fusion > .
2020 How is Money Created? – Everything We Need to Know - Fusion > .
Deflation .. 


1) The Federal Reserve is the central bank of US. Europe has the European Central Bank.
a. Most Central Banks have two jobs:
- they regulate and oversee the nation's commercial banks by making sure that banks have enough money in reserve to avoid bank runs.
- they conduct monetary policy which is increasing or decreasing the money supply to speed up or slow down the overall economy.
2) Interest rate - the price of borrowing money.
a. When interest rates are low, borrowers will find it easier to pay back loans so they will borrow more and spend more. When interest rates are high, borrowers borrow less and spend less.
b. Expansionary monetary policy - when central bank wants to speed up the economy, it will increase the money supply, which will decrease interest rates and lead to more borrowing and spending.
c. Contractionary monetary policy - when central bank wants to slow down the economy, they decrease the money supply. Less money available will increase interest rates and decrease borrowing and spending.
3) Liquid assets - an asset that can be converted into cash quickly and with minimal impact to the price received.
4) Open market operations - this is when the federal reserve buys or sells short term government bonds.
5) Quantitative easing (Q.E.) - when central banks buy longer term assets from banks.
6) Monetary policy - changing money supply to speed up or slow down economy.

https://www.khanacademy.org/economics... .

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/...

11 - Money and Finance

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Money and Finance: CrCo > .
Debt ..

Europe - Medieval Banking & Money Creation 

1) Money serves three main purposes:
- Medium of exchange. It is generally accepted for payment for goods and services.
- Store of value. Money can be stored.
- Unit of account. Money is standardized metric that helps us measure value of things.
2) Financial system.
a. Lenders
b. Borrowers
c. Governments
d. Capital - the machinery, tools and factories owned by a business and used in production.
e. Financial system is a network of institutions, markets and contracts that brings lenders and borrowers together.
f. Debt - if you get a loan from the bank, you are obligated to pay back the amount you borrowed plus the amount of interest.
g. Equity - the difference between the value of the assets/ interest and the cost of liabilities of something owned.
h. Financial instrument - a tradeable asset of any kind.
i. Financial institution - an establishment that conducts financial transactions such as investments, loans and deposits.
j. Financial markets with instruments like stocks and bonds, allow borrowers to crowdsource the money they need to borrow. They raise their capital from lots of investors, and spread the risk around.

12 - 2008 Financial Crisis

.How it Happened - The 2008 Financial Crisis - CrCo > .
Impact of Mounting Sovereign Debts - "Autodidact" - Goodfellows > .


The 2008 financial crisis began with home mortgages, and the use of mortgages as an investment instrument. For years, it seemed like the US housing market would go up and up. Like a bubble or something. It turns out it was a bubble. But not the good kind. And the government response was ... interesting.

1) Default - when a debtor is unable to meet the legal obligation of debt repayment.
a. Traditionally it was pretty hard to get a mortgage if you had bad credit or didn't have a steady job. Lenders just didn't want to take the risk that you might "default" on your loan.
b. In 2000s investors in the US and abroad, looking for low-risk, high-return investments, started throwing money at the US housing market.
2). Mortgage back securities are created when large financial institution securitize mortgages.
a. Securitize - the process of taking an illiquid asset and transforming it into a security.
b. They gave a lot of mortgage backed-securities AAA-ratings - the best of the best. And back when mortgages only for borrowers with good credit, mortgage debt was a good investment.
3) Subprime mortgage - a loan granted to individuals with poor credit history.
a. The new lax lending requirements and low interest rates drove housing prices higher, which only made mortgage backed securities and CDOs seem like an even better investment.
b. As people stopped buying houses and paying mortgages, the big financial institutions stopped buying subprime mortgages and subprime lenders were getting stuck with bad loans. By 2007 some really big lenders had declared bankruptcy.
c. Credit default swaps were also turned into other securities - that essentially allowed traders to bet huge amounts of money on whether the value of mortgage securities would go up or down.
d. No one knew exactly how bad the balance sheets at some of these financial institutions really were - these complicated, unregulated assets made it hard to tell.
4) Perverse incentive - when a policy ends up having a negative effect, opposite of what is intended.
5) Moral hazard - when one person takes on more risk because someone else bears the burden of that risk.
a. Blaming the government: "The sentries were not at their posts, in no small part due to the widely accepted faith in the self-correcting nature of the markets, and the ability of financial institutions to effectively police themselves."

13 - Recession, Hyperinflation, and Stagflation

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Recession, Hyperinflation, and Stagflation - CrCo > .
Phillips Curve - Inflation inversely proportional to unemployment - EcUnd > .
22-10-28 How China Is Helping to Reduce Inflation - Patrick Boyle > .
22-1-15 Why Turkey Is Not Fixing It's Hyperinflation Problem - EcEx > .
What Is Stagflation? - Marginal > .
skip Responds ad > . timestamps:
0:00​ - introduction
1:57 - is the US like Weimar?
13:07​ - when is hyperinflation unstoppable?
18:50 - is the US special?
20:27 - how to protect yourself
1923: Hyperinflation | Weimar Germany - long, long > .
Mid-COVID Inflation - 2021  
Shelter Index ..

1) Hyperinflation - when a country experiences a monthly inflation rate of over 50% or around 13,000% annual inflation.
a. Extreme inflation also forces people to spend as quickly as possible rather than save of lend, so there is no money available to fund new businesses. And all that uncertainty limits foreign investment and trade.
b. The more money you print, the more inflation you get.
c. Economists call the number of times a dollar is spent per year a velocity of money. When people spend their money as quickly as they get it, that increases velocity, which pushes inflation up even faster.
2) Depression.
a. After the initial crash in 1929 the federal reserve dropped interest rates to zero, output and prices fell, and regular people started to expect further price declines. Unemployment rose to 25% and the average family income dropped by around 40%.
3) Stagflation - when output slows down or stops, or stagnates at the same time that prices rise. Stagnant economy + inflation = stagflation.
a. The FED tried to address this by boosting the money supply and cutting interest rates, but output couldn't rise much because of low productivity and the oil shortage. So all that extra money just triggered inflation.

In economics, stagflation or recession-inflation is a situation in which the inflation rate is high, the economic growth rate slows, and unemployment remains steadily high. It presents a dilemma for economic policy, since actions intended to lower inflation may exacerbate unemployment.

The term, a portmanteau of stagnation and inflation, is generally attributed to Iain Macleod, a British Conservative Party politician who became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1970. Macleod used the word in a 1965 speech to Parliament during a period of simultaneously high inflation and unemployment in the United Kingdom. Warning the House of Commons of the gravity of the situation, he said: "We now have the worst of both worlds—not just inflation on the one side or stagnation on the other, but both of them together. We have a sort of 'stagflation' situation. And history, in modern terms, is indeed being made."

Macleod used the term again on 7 July 1970, and the media began also to use it, for example in The Economist on 15 August 1970, and Newsweek on 19 March 1973. John Maynard Keynes did not use the term, but some of his work refers to the conditions that most would recognise as stagflation. In the version of Keynesian macroeconomic theory that was dominant between the end of World War II and the late 1970s, inflation and recession were regarded as mutually exclusive, the relationship between the two being described by the Phillips curve. Stagflation is very costly and difficult to eradicate once it starts, both in social terms and in budget deficits.

On Monday October 18, 2021, Beijing released new economic data, and it does not look good. The third quarter economy under performed and it serves as the harbinger of more pain ahead in the final three months of the year. Some analysts fear stagflation is coming.

For the three months ending September, China's GDP grew by 4.9 per cent from a year ago, missing market expectations of 5 per cent growth and well below the 7.9 per cent gain seen in the second quarter. Bear in mind, the first quarter GDP grew at 18.3 percent. The first half of this year saw an strong growth due to a post-pandemic rebound. But the Delta variant outbreaks, disasters such as floods and Beijing’s political policy intervention, plus self-inflicted power outage, produced lukewarm growth in the 3rd quarter.

14 - Economic Schools of Thought

.Economic Schools of Thought - CrCo > .

Wealth of Nations (1776) ..

Economic theories are constantly being proven, disproven and revised. The problem is, when these theories are wrong, millions of people can be adversely affected.
1) The founder of modern economics was a Scottish philosopher, named Adam Smith. In 1776 his book "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" was published. It was an organized discussion about economic theory.
a. When both focus on what they're best at and then trade, everyone benefits.
2) In 1890 was published a book, called "Principles of Economics" by Alfred Marshall
(supply and demand). It embodied classical economics.
2) The Austrian School of economics was founded by Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises and rejected nearly all forms of fiscal and monetary policy. They argued that,
a) heavy state involvement had never produced the results it promised, and that,
b) regulation and government tinkering is actually a problem, not a solution.
2B) The Austrian School's argument against government intervention was carried forward in the US by Milton Friedman (Chicago school of economics), who advocated privatization of many functions that have been assumed by government, famously proposing school vouchers and deregulation of the economy. Friedman also concluded that the Great Depression could be blamed on botched monetary policy, rather than some inherent fault of capitalism [like unregulated greed].
4) In 1936 John Maynard Keynes published a book "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" which launched a field of macroeconomics.
a. Keynesians claimed that during recessions it is necessary for the government to get involved by using monetary and fiscal policy to increase output and decrease unemployment.
5) Socialism - system where the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government.
6) Monetarism - focused on price stability and argue the money supply should be increased slowly and predictably to allow for steady growth. (Monetarism ..)
7) Supply side economics (trickle down economics) - advocated deregulation and cutting taxes, especially corporate taxes.
8) New neoclassical synthesis - synthesis of classical economic theories and Keynesian economics.

Monetarism ..

Austrian School of economics .
Chicago school of economics .
Demurrage (currency) .
Fiscalism (usually contrasted to monetarism)
Inflation targeting .
Market monetarism .
Modern Monetary Theory .

American.
Austrian.
Chartalism
Chicago.

sī vīs pācem, parā bellum

igitur quī dēsīderat pācem praeparet bellum    therefore, he who desires peace, let him prepare for war sī vīs pācem, parā bellum if you wan...