THE FUNDAMENTAL ISSUE OF FRENCH POLITICS

INTRODUCTION

In this post, I will move away from the traditional economic topic I tend to write about here to a more political one. Yet, of course, politics affect economic policies and it is not for nothing that the economic science was first known as political economy. Furthermore, while I will be talking about France specifically, I think similar conclusions could be drawn in many European countries. Therefore, I hope  the reader will find these musings of interest.

EUROPE: ECONOMICALLY CHALLENGED

Introduction

This post is in reaction to the fact that I read a lot of economic stuff (technical term, that) - blogs, on-line magazine, e-letters etc. - and, since most of them are written by Americans, they tend to focus, naturally enough, on America's problems.

But, from the outside, the economic issues facing the USA are fairly simple. They've spent thirty years destroying every support pillar on which the middle class was built and giving more and more money and power to a really tiny elite. It was supposed to unleash limitless growth as energy and entrepreneurship were freed. It hasn't worked, to say the least.

Yes, there is a problem with the future path of Medicare which will bankrupt the US government if it is not fixed but, on the other hand, they have the least cost-efficient health care system in the whole wide world so, since just switching to any system of any of the other developed (and even emerging!) nations would sort most of it, it just cannot be a huge deal, conceptually.

But it is - Politically.

WHY AWAY SO LONG - AN APOLOGY

To anyone actually reading this blog (there are a few of you, according to my page view count - and I thank you deeply for taking the time), I would like to apologise for the long hiatus.

The quick explanation is: personal issues.

The slightly longer one is that I lost my father-in-law unexpectedly and, apart from all the heart-aches involved for my wife, my kids and my mother-in-law, I decided to relocate to be with them. It's been a hard summer but, hopefully, things will improve from there on. Fate definitely owe me a few lucky breaks!

Back to the economic stuff with my next post...

Raise Taxes on Rich - by Nick Hanauer

So I had read that piece by Nick Hanauer some time ago but it's becoming news again because TED is refusing to publish his talk on income inequality. Quite incredibly so given their statement mission and the type of talks they're usually willing to have.


So here his original article - http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-07/raise-taxes-on-rich-to-reward-true-job-creators-nick-hanauer.html


Needless to say, I agree with nearly every words.

NGDP TARGETING: I LIKE IT... BUT!

Introduction

Via Scott Sumner's increasingly famous blog ( http://www.themoneyillusion.com/ ), I came across that post about Evan Soltas and his defense of NGDP targeting: http://esoltas.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/ngdp-targeting-laymans-guide.html

Now, I am quite favourable to using a NGDP target as an aggregate of the "dual mandate" most Central Banks tend to have - i.e. instead of stating that you got a target of 2% inflation and a real growth target of circa 3%, you can just state that you got an objective of 5% NGDP growth. That's fine. That's also mostly cosmetic.

And although I am quite indebted to Scott Sumner for providing me with the impetus to write a blog, I will use Evan Soltas' post to state why I think NGDP targeting is limited. That's because he does write beautifully and made a succinct easy-to-debate summary of NGDP targeting in 6 points.

Another useful pointer was provided by Saturos, a regular commenter on Scott's blog and who referenced a nice article on NGDP targeting: "Should we replace Mervin King with a robot?" http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/uk/eocnomic-growth-market-monetarism-ngdp-20200.

JAMIE DIMON IS A BLOODY IDIOT, PART 2

Okay, I am on record on this blog for saying nasty things about Dimon.


Still I wish he didn't go out of his way to prove me right... :)


I liked that article: http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rediscovering-government/dimon-fiasco-stark-lesson-why-finance-needs-government-regulation


... and that one: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/what-scares-me-isnt-2-billion-loss-jp-morgan-made-what-scares-me-is-the-record-19-billion-in-profits.html


Now, now, now, can we get some serious banking regulation, pretty f#%king please?


The plebs and proles are losing patience - ever so slowly but ever so surely nonetheless and, as the saying goes, you wouldn't like them angry...

TAXES, HERE COMES THE GREAT REAPER, PART 2

PART 2: TAXES, THEY ARE SO UNFAIR!

Apologies to anyone actually reading this blog for the long delay - it's been a difficult month and I haven't found the courage to put my thoughts in order. But here is my attempt.

Introduction

In the previous post, I examined the shape I would like taxation to take. Basically, it ought, in my opinion, to follow income distribution i.e. be flat/near flat for the first 99.9% of the population and then increase exponentially for the remaining 0.1%.

This tends to lead my more conservative friends to 4 types of objections which I would like to address today.