Suchergebnisse

This is an expanded and updated edition of "The Yezidis" by John S. Guest, published by Kegan Paul International in 1987. It has been revised and reissued in response to interest in the Kurdish people, of whom the Yezidis are a sect. The 150,000 members of the Yezidi religious group are spread out over Iraq, Turkey, Syria and the former USSR - and have, despite persecutions and discrimination, retained their identity for over 500 years. The author of this history of the Yezidis traces the origin of their religion, describes the discovery of the people by Western travellers in the early ninetee

Gunther Schnabl and Thomas Stratmann Ten years after the outbreak of the global financial crisis, banks in the euro area have not recovered. The Euro Stoxx Financials is 65% below the pre-crisis peak, whereas the S&P Financials has come close to the pre-crisis level. The different fate of financial institutions is due to different monetary … Continue reading Unlike the Fed the ECB Leaves Euro Area Banks Unprepared for the Downswing

by Karl-Friedrich Israel and Gunther Schnabl The ECB’s zero and negative interest rate policy continues despite the economic upswing. An interest rate hike is not expected before autumn 2019. The extensive purchases of government and corporate bonds will have reached €2,600 billion by the end of the year. The ECB’s financial market supervision as part … Continue reading The ECB Creates Jobs for Central Bankers Instead of Safeguarding Financial Stability

by Sebastian Müller For a long time, Austrian macro had a unique selling point in what might be called the 'money matters' view: referring to the notion that changes in the money supply by their very nature can never be said to be neutral. Yeager (1997) and Horwitz (2000) describe the Austrian stance as a … Continue reading Distributional Effects of Monetary Policy: An Opportunity for Austrian Economics

by Edward Chancellor* Interest rates in China may never have turned negative, as they did in neighbouring Japan. Yet China's economy has also become distorted by the decade of easy money since the 2008 financial crisis. As in the West, low interest rates in China are responsible for inflating asset prices, misallocating capital, aggravating inequality … Continue reading Ten Years After Lehman (4): Chinese Imports

by Edward Chancellor* The Greek philosopher Aristotle attacked the charging of interest on grounds that lenders demanded more money in return than they supplied. This ancient prejudice against interest lingers in the French economist Thomas Piketty's claim that inequality increases when the return on capital, a quantum which includes the rate of interest, is higher … Continue reading Ten Years After Lehman (3): The Haves

by Edward Chancellor* In 1776, the English man of letters Horace Walpole observed a "rage of building everywhere". At the time, the yield on English government bonds, known as Consols, had fallen sharply and mortgages could be had at 3.5 percent. In the "Wealth of Nations", published that year, Adam Smith observed that the recent … Continue reading Ten Years After Lehman (2): Bubbles Galore & Zombies

by Edward Chancellor* Back in November 2002, Ben Bernanke, then a governor of the Federal Reserve, attended Milton Friedman's 90th birthday party. In his writings, the legendary monetarist had pinned the Great Depression on policy failures of the American central bank. Bernanke was a keen disciple and apologised to Friedman on behalf of his employer, … Continue reading Ten Years After Lehman: An Interest-Rate Perspective

by Arash Molavi Vasséi In a previous post, Andreas refers to George Selgin’s recent discussion of the place of fractional reserve banking in the Austrian Business Cycle Theory (ABCT). There, Selgin takes a swipe at the monetary pillar of the ABCT. According to the Austrian model, fractional reserve banking is inclined to create money out … Continue reading The Irrelevance of Deposit Creation for Prices and Allocation: Comments on Selgin

by Liya Palagashvili About two weeks ago, City Council in New York City voted to ban ride-hailing services (Uber, Lyft, Via, Juno) from adding new drivers for a year—with the exception of wheelchair accessible vehicles. The main justification for this cap is that ride-hailing services have been leading to reductions in vehicular speeds and causing … Continue reading The Ride-Hailing Vehicle Cap

Patricia Commun / Stefan Kolev (eds.): Wilhelm Röpke (1899-1966). A Liberal Political Economist and Conservative Social Philosopher, Springer, Cham 2018, 272 pages, 123 Euro. by Erwin Dekker Neo-liberalism is often associated with an excessive focus on the market at the expense of both the state and society. This new book, which is the outcome of … Continue reading The Virtues of the Market: Wilhelm Röpke as a Cultural Economist

by Gunther Schnabl Both in Europe and in the US, interest rates have fallen to still very low levels and central banks have used unconventional measures to stimulate the economy. Nevertheless, officially measured inflation rates have remained low. While central bankers are proud of the high degree of price stability, many citizens feel their purchasing … Continue reading Don't Trust the CPI – Inflation is Hidden Somewhere Else!

by Jerry O’Driscoll Fed Chairman Jerome Powell testified to the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. It was the semi-annual testimony mandated by the Humphrey–Hawkins Act. Powell's testimony was anodyne. He repeated and reiterated the Fed's planned policy moves with respect to interest rates, and added suitable caveats on economic growth, inflation, and … Continue reading Fed Policy