Paul Krugman's Blog, page 642

An IFI success

Credit where credit (line) is due: the G20 outcome was better than I expected, with something substantive and important emerging - namely, much bigger funding for international financial institutions (IFIs), plus expanded trade credit. This will help smaller, currency-crisis countries a lot.
A turning point? No. But realistically, most big-time international meetings produce nothing; this did [...:]

"The banks" versus "some banks"

On the run: this critique of my views is interesting. But I think there's a crucial assumption that isn't right. The question isn't whether "the banks" are insolvent; most surely aren't. Instead, some banks are probably insolvent.
So it's not the case that the costs of the PPIP are costs we'd have to bear one way [...:]

Japan's recovery

A quick note on Keiichiro Kobayashi's post on Japan's lessons for the crisis: I have considerable sympathy for his views. But when he says
Only after Resona Bank had been temporarily placed under government control, the IRCJ had been established, and Japanese banks had embarked on an all-out effort to dispose of bad loans, did stock [...:]

We're doomed, part XXXV

The Daily Beast: Sizzling G-20 wives.

Geithner-san

Adam Posen, who really really knows what went down during Japan's lost decade, says:
What the Obama team is proposing is disconcertingly similar to the actions of Japanese Prime Ministers Hashimoti, Obuchi, and Mori in 1995 and 1998: Rather than ask the legislature for straightforward recapitalization money, you have the political leadership preferring to risk [...:]

Partying like it's 1931

I'm detecting a trend in commentary that I find slightly ominous. Some of the economic news lately has been slightly better than expected, which was bound to happen at some point (on average, after all, half the news should be better than expected). Mostly this is in the form of things getting worse more [...:]

"Dow 36,000″ and your pension

So in 2007 the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation - which stands behind corporate pensions - switched from bonds only to lots of stocks, buying in at, natch, the peak of the market. Oops. And this is big stuff: the Bush administration may have left us all a gratuitous loss of hundreds of billions.
Why did this [...:]

Golden Fetters II

This is the most striking picture I've come up with. It shows discount rates in the US, Britain, and Germany in the late 20s and early 30s, and highlights the way attempts to defend the gold standard led to perverse monetary policies at what was arguably a crucial moment.

The good news is that we [...:]

Golden fetters

A note to myself trying to make sense of the role of gold, money multipliers, and all that in the onset and spread of the Great Depression, here.

The magazine cover effect

I've long been a believer in the magazine cover indicator: when you see a corporate chieftain on the cover of a glossy magazine, short the stock. Or as I once put it (I'd actually forgotten I'd said that), "Whom the Gods would destroy, they first put on the cover of Business Week."
There's even empirical evidence [...:]