Picture: AFP Washington. The world’s major economies are skating on dangerously thin ice and lack the fiscal, monetary, and emergency tools to fight the next downturn, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in an article for The Telegraph. A roster of top crisis veterans fear an even more intractable slump than the Lehman recession when the current ageing expansion rolls over. The implications for liberal democracy are sobering. “We have no ability to turn the economy around,” said Martin Feldstein, President of the US National Bureau of Economic Research. “When the next recession comes, it is going to be deeper and last longer than in the past. We don’t have any strategy to deal with it,” he told The Daily Telegraph. Professor Feldstein, a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, described a bleak scenario more akin to the depressions of the 1870s or the 1930s than anything experienced in the post-War era. He warned that a … [Read more...] about The Telegraph: The next downturn could rival the Great Depression and wipe $10 trillion off US household assets
The great depression
The next downturn could rival the Great Depression and wipe $10 trillion off US household assets
The world’s major economies are skating on dangerously thin ice and lack the fiscal, monetary, and emergency tools to fight the next downturn. A roster of top crisis veterans fear an even more intractable slump than the Lehman recession when the current ageing expansion rolls over. The implications for liberal democracy are sobering. “We have no ability to turn the economy around,” said Martin Feldstein, President of the US National Bureau of Economic Research. “When the next recession comes, it is going to be deeper and last longer than in the past. We don’t have any strategy to deal with it,” he told The Daily Telegraph. Professor Feldstein, a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic... To continue reading this article Start your free trial of Premium Access all Premium articles Subscriber-only events Cancel any time Free for 30 days then only £2 per week Try Premium Access one Premium article … [Read more...] about The next downturn could rival the Great Depression and wipe $10 trillion off US household assets
Workers’ rights as bad as 1930s Great Depression, warns Labour’s John McDonnell
Workers rights are as bad as they were during the Great Depression, John McDonnell warns today. The Tories have caused the worst levels of insecurity in the workplace since the 1930s, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor will say. In his speech to the TUC congress on Tuesday, Mr McDonnell will say the Tories have stripped back employment rights to a level not seen since the economic depression 80 years ago. He will use his keynote address to delegates to set out Labour’s plans to forge a new workplace environment. The Shadow Chancellor will pledge that Labour will “restore the balance of power in the workplace”. In his speech to the TUC, John McDonnell is expected to say: “The massive growth in zero hours contracts and the gig economy have produced a workplace environment of insecurity not seen since the 1930s. "The decline of collective bargaining has meant that workers also now have little say over the key decisions taken by their employers over the future of … [Read more...] about Workers’ rights as bad as 1930s Great Depression, warns Labour’s John McDonnell
Trump is tariffically ignorant of economics, but don’t expect another Great Depression
Paul Samuelson, a Nobel Laureate in economics, was once challenged by a sceptical mathematician to name one proposition across all the social sciences which was both true and non-trivial. Samuelson shot back with David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage: “that this idea is logically true need not be argued before a mathematician; that it is not trivial is attested by the thousands of important and intelligent men who have never been able to grasp the doctrine for themselves or to believe it after it was explained to them”. Economists disagree on almost everything, but no proposition is more widely held than that international free trade generally benefits the citizens of both exporting and importing countries. Read more: No need to panic – Trump’s tariff tantrum is Britain’s opportunity But here we are again now, questioning that logic, with the introduction of a 25 per cent tariff on steel and a 10 per cent tariff on aluminium by the US … [Read more...] about Trump is tariffically ignorant of economics, but don’t expect another Great Depression
US Economists Warn Trump Against Dragging Country Into Next ‘Great Depression’
In an open letter to President Donald Trump, a group of leading US economists, among them Nobel laureates, has warned him about the negative consequences of his protectionist policy. The undersigned economists, 1,144 in all, urged Trump to avoid repeating the mistakes that led to the Great Depression of the 1930s. They reminded him of a similar letter more than 1,000 economists sent to Congress in 1930 urging lawmakers to reject the protectionist Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. The authors described the lowering of trade barriers between nations as one of the great achievements of the global economic system in the postwar era. They warned that Trump’s protectionist measures would “raise the cost of living and injure the great majority of our citizens.” © AP Photo / Alex Brandon'In Light of China's Unfair Retaliation,' Trump Threatens $100B More in TariffsHigher … [Read more...] about US Economists Warn Trump Against Dragging Country Into Next ‘Great Depression’