Why are the boomers so angry?

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No, its not really about Borrowing, but I have just spotted this article and was fascinated by the possibility that older people have just decided to kill their golden goose.

Flip Chart Fairy Tales

A quote about Brexit supporters by a friend of mine last week attracted a lot of attention when I stuck it on Twitter yesterday.

This is the last ‘fuck you’ from the baby boomers. They took the secure corporate and government jobs with the guaranteed pay rises and final salary pension schemes and benefitted from property they bought cheap and sold dear. They burnt the bridges behind them by colluding with the dismantling of the very things that had brought them prosperity. Their last act will be to burn the economy before they die.

It even made the Independent. Some people were offended by it but, for the majority of those who commented, it seemed to strike a chord, suggesting there is at least a grain of truth in it.

It is certainly true that the pollsters are recording the highest support for Brexit among older voters. YouGov data

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Time to scrap the Euro?

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The euro — gold cage of our time | LARS P. SYLL

 

The euro has taken away the possibility for national governments to manage their economies in a meaningful way — and in Greece the people has had to pay the true costs of its concomita…

Source: The euro — gold cage of our time | LARS P. SYLL

The bonus puzzle | LARS P. SYLL

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Sometimes I come across something that makes me wonder.  This is one of those somethings.  Perhaps bankers bonuses exist because they can get them, not because they help make banks more profitable?

Diane Coyle has an excellent article in the FT about an apparent puzzle. Why do executives get incentive bonuses (extra pay on meeting some target), but most workers do not? Her article is based ar…

Source: The bonus puzzle | LARS P. SYLL

Tell the IMF to count the cost of public-private partnerships – Jubilee Debt Campaign UK

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The International Monetary Fund is reviewing its framework for judging whether countries have a debt crisis. But currently, the huge hidden costs of public-private partnerships are not included.

Source: Tell the IMF to count the cost of public-private partnerships – Jubilee Debt Campaign UK

What’s the point of economists?

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Just had to reference this article from Economia – the magazine for Chartered Accountants.

It starts off by saying that economists only get things right about 4 times out of 10.  If I have read the grade boundaries issued by one of the exam boards correctly that would have been enough to get a grade F at GCSE economics units 11 and 12.  And if we use the lower mark “3 or 4 times” offered later in the article it is barely even enough for a grade G.

It then goes on to say economics is not a black and white science – but then what is?  Even the physics of light has to take account of colour.

The profession is likened to a sports coach who cannot guarantee a win even by putting out the best team possible.  Except that economists do not seem to get the sack for repeated poor performance.

Or economists should be likened to medics who would not be able to predict when you are going to get ill but should be able to advise you how to get better.  Except that economists do not seem to be able to agree on a course of treatment – should we spend our way out of recession or should we cut back on public expenditure to balance the books.  Or should we do a George Osborne and try a bit of both – cut back on public expenditure till it hurts and still borrow more.

And then the article talks about the benefit of hindsight giving us 20/20 vision.  But again I am not sure that it does, as economists don’t seem to be able to agree whether they should have been expected to predict the 2008 financial crisis.

But perhaps I am biased in my thinking that economics is not science if we follow the Oxford dictionaries definition:

The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment

It is included as a social science:

The scientific study of human society and social relationships

which attempts to use scientific methodology but is severely limited because it is not easy (or even legal) to experiment on human society and relationships – so that it is limited to observation without being able to test any theories about how economics works.

Noam Chomsky on Europe’s Refugee Crisis and the Endless Greek Debt Drama | GreekReporter.com

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OK this is not just about the debt crisis but…

Professor Noam Chomsky talks about Europe’s refugee crisis and the Greek debt drama in an exclusive interview.

 

Europe is torn apart as there is no end to the arrival of ever greater number of refugees and migrants, while many European countries, especially in the south, continue facing severe economic problems such as unacceptable unemployment levels, high debt-to-GDP ratios, and increasing poverty and exclusion for their youths.

 

What does the world’s leading public intellectual, renowned MIT linguist, philosopher and social critic Noam Chomsky, author of over 100 books and thousands of articles, think about current developments in Europe?

Source: Noam Chomsky on Europe’s Refugee Crisis and the Endless Greek Debt Drama | GreekReporter.com

The fiction of forecasting

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I realise that this article was written by an accountant (Richard Creepicture of Richard Cree is editor-in-chief of economia, which is the magazine for Chartered Accountants) and can therefore be rubbished by all practising economists, but I do like his suggestion that economic forecasts are about as useful as a 5-year weather forecast.

Here are some highlights

About Mark Carney:

A week ago, on what some in the media insisted on labelling “Super Thursday”, (because how can a day feel important without a hashtag-friendly label?) the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, released a huge quantity of economic data. From the slew of numbers and insights he offered up, one headline jumped out. Contrary to his advice the last time he gave such “forward guidance”, way back in July when the economics clearly looked completely different and when he announced interest rates were on the verge of being hiked up, rates would now not be going up until 2017.

 

This week, as better than expected numbers on unemployment suggest the economy may be on the verge of over-heating, it now seems plausible that Carney’s next forward guidance may move that 2017 date forward again.

About George Osborne:

Meanwhile, across town in Westminster the chancellor, George Osborne, is planning his next mini-Budget (how long ago it seems since he pledged to scrap these in favour of a return to an annual Budget). At the heart of his Autumn Statement will be a set of economic forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Or rather, a set of revised forecasts. And they will be wrong, or more accurately they will only be a best guess of what might happen. Apologies to the doubtless very clever economists at the OBR if they’ve landed a couple, but most OBR forecasts have had to be revised. In fact, the recent record of most of those who make a living from reading the economic runes hasn’t been great. Only a handful of economists predicted the economic crash (and many of those are from the Cassandra school of economics, rather like the former business secretary Vince Cable, who was once accused of predicting “nine out of the last three recessions”). Today you can find an economist prepared to collect together a bunch of financial and economic indicators that point to either the start of the next recession, the beginning of a golden recovery or anything in between. Can someone please just admit we haven’t really got a clue, that the models, if they were ever fit for purpose are broken?

If you want to read the whole article go to The fiction of forecasting