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2009
12/21/2009
The 'Global Imbalances' Myth
As the economic crisis has eased in recent months, a questionable international consensus has emerged: The global economy needs to be rebalanced. "We cannot follow the same policies that led to such imbalanced growth," President Barack Obama said during his Asia trip last month. European Central Bank head Jean-Claude Trichet declared in September that "imbalances have been at the roots of the present difficulties. If we don't correct them, we'll have the recipe for the next major crisis."
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12/28/2009
The Familiar Sloshing Sound of Easy Money
Since the financial meltdown, it's become conventional wisdom that prior to the crisis, the world was awash in too much easy money—and that now it doesn't have enough. It's a tidy thesis, widely accepted. It's also wrong. What's remarkable about our post-crisis reality isn't that we're not capital-starved; on the contrary, we're still swimming in excess liquidity. During those months of panic, all that cash didn't evaporate. A lot of it just got stashed on the sidelines. Now the global pool is growing again, and the next market bubbles are already popping up.
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