Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been tagged as “European Central Bank”
Download this episode (right click and save) Dr. Rasmus dedicates today’s show to examining the condition of financial bubble and growing instability in global financial markets. Recent reports and studies warning of bubbles, debt, and financial instability are reviewed, including the IMF, Bank of International Settlements, the just released report by Deutschebank economists, ‘The Next Financial Crisis’, and key financial players …
The Fed and other central bank leaders gathering at Jackson Hole Wyoming today express concern for financial instability. Fed chair, Janet Yellen, warns of the Trump administration’s current fast tracking of financial deregulation, driven by the Goldman Sachs-driven US Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin. Dr. Rasmus explains how shadow bankers, like Goldman Sachs, now have almost complete dominance over Trump economic …
Dr. Rasmus explains how the global capitalist economy crossed a kind of economic rubicon with the 2008-09 global crash and has not been able to restore itself to pre-crisis trends. With 2008, the growth in global trade as a percent of global GDP hit a wall, stagnated after, and is now declining as a percent of global GDP which itself …
Download this episode (right click and save) Dr. Rasmus reviews key decisions by central banks this past week that are making investors nervous about stock and bond market bubbles that have been created since 2008. Heads of central banks in Europe—the ECB and Bank of England—this week signaled they too may raise interest rates and sell off their QE balance …
In the first half of the show, Dr. Rasmus reviews key economic events of the past week, including the collapseof ‘Banco Popular’ bank in Europe and what it might mean in coming weeks to Europe’s fragile banking system, the emerging problems in Junk Bonds and the retail sector in the US, renewed falling oil prices, the US House passing the …
The US stock markets are recognized by a growing number of analysts as approaching, or already in, bubble territory. Yet stocks have ratcheted up another 15%-20% since Trump won the election. The run-up is sometimes called the ‘Trump Trade’. Investors have been ploughing in even more anticipating another stage of corporate profits subsidization by Trump and Republican fiscal policies—Trump proposed $6.2 trillion in tax cuts, deregulation (Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, EPA, Mergers & Acquisitions encouragement, etc.), shifting hundreds of billions $ from social programs to defense spending, and $1 trillion in Trump proposed infrastructure spending. Jack explains how expectations of the policy shift to fiscal from central bank, monetary policies from 2008-2016, is now the new strategy for subsidizing corporate profits and investor further wealth gains. Central bank monetary policy had run its course and began to develop contradictions. Fiscal policy—tax cuts, deregulation, infrastructure and defense spending—is the new strategy. US stocks surged in anticipation of the new profit opportunities. But signs Trump may not deliver have stopped investors in their tracks this past week. Failure to deliver policy may result in a major stock pullback in 2017. Jack cites various sources that the current stock market bubble has peaked.
The Fed raised interest rates again this past week. Jack explains it has little to do with it having reached its inflation or employment targets, but represents the major policy shift underway by US economic elites. From Fed low interest policy for eight years subsidizing stock, bond and financial assets—and thereby corporate and investor profits and incomes of the wealthiest 1%–the shift now underway is to subsidize profits and incomes of the 1% by cutting taxes, deregulation, and moderate infrastructure spending. Sustained low Fed rates were beginning to cause more instability in financial markets after 8 years. They played their part in boosting profits and incomes; now another policy ‘mix’ is emerging. Jack shows how Fed 2% inflation and job targets are phony justifications for Fed low rate policy continuation; how and why long term rates which the Fed doesn’t control will continue to rise, and what the global responses and effects in Europe, Japan and China will be to the new Fed direction. Will the Fed be used by the US economic elite to check Trump? Possibly.
Jack Rasmus invites guest, Alan Benjamin, to discuss the pending April-May elections in France. How goes France goes Europe, the saying goes. Will Le Pen’s right wing National Front Party pull off a ‘Trump Surprise’ and win the elections, pulling France out of the European Union as she promised? Will the independent Macron united the remnants of capitalist parties and right wing social democracy in the Socialist Party and win? What is the ‘united left’ in formation in France? What does it mean by ‘left frexit’. Benjamin provides a ‘on site’ analysis from his work in Europe and France today not available in mainstream media. Rasmus and Benjamin discuss the collapse of traditional social democracy in Europe as it has aligned with European Neoliberalism and the rise of both right wing populist parties and emerging left wing alternatives. The positions of all the major parties in the French election are explained. Comparisons to the UK Labor Party, Germany’s SPD and AfD, Spain’s Podemos, and with US ‘Sanders-Warren’ efforts to ‘reform’ the US Democrat party are discussed.
Jack Rasmus reviews the key economic events, US and global, in the run-up to the Trump inauguration: China President Xi warning of trade war with US, the European Central Bank’s continuation of its QE policy, the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister, May, signals a ‘hard Brexit’, Trump cabinet nominees tell Congress what they want to hear (and not what they intend …
Happy New Year! May yours be peaceful, safe and impactful! As tumultuous as last year was from a global political perspective on the back of a rocky start market-wise, 2017 will be much more so. The central bank subsidization of the financial system (especially in the US and Europe) that began with the Fed invoking zero interest rate policy in …
