The elevation the Chinese renminbi (also known as the yuan) to the basket of global currencies making up the International Monetary Fund’s special drawing rights (SDRs), in effect making it an international reserve currency, is unlikely to have any major immediate effects. But it does underscore the vast transformation in the foundations of the world economy over the past three …
Larry Schwartz – The 9 Most Expensive Medicines in the World—Courtesy of Big Pharma
Hedge funder Martin Shkreli reminded everyone of the sky-high—and seemingly arbitrary—costs of prescription medicines in this country when he bought and immediately increased the price of an established drug used to fight a parasitic infection. The price hike was eye-popping, from $13.50 a pill to $750 per pill, prompting Dr. Judith Aberg of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount …
Laura Colby – How Do You Boost GDP by $28 Trillion? Gender Equality Would Do It, McKinsey Says
Denying women full participation in the global economy is costly.McKinsey & Co. has now calculated by just how much. Full gender equality would add 26 percent, or $28 trillion, to globalgross domestic product in 2025, according to a new report by the consulting firm’s research and economics arm. While capturing that potential may not be realistic in the short term, boosting women’s …
WILLIAM EDSTROM – Waiting for Collapse: USA Debt Bombs Bursting
It’s been so easy the past 15 years for local governments in the USA, state governments, government authorities, corporations, banks, hedge funds and the US Federal government to simply say how many millions, billions or trillions of dollars they wanted, pay some high priced call accountants to fill out some paperwork with fine print and voila, millions, billions and trillions …
Gail Tverberg – How our energy problem leads to a debt collapse problem
Usually, we don’t stop to think about how the whole economy works together. A major reason is that we have been lacking data to see long-term relationships. In this post, I show some longer-term time series relating to energy growth, GDP growth, and debt growth–going back to 1820 in some cases–that help us understand our situation better. When examining these …
Pepe Escobar – Welcome to the trade deal wars
BANGKOK — China continues to grow at a not too shabby 7%. And yet, because of the yuan devaluation and the sharp drop in the stock market, in most Western capitals the narrative switched to Armageddon descended over an economic model that generated, over the years, six-fold growth in Chinese GDP. Few are aware that Beijing, simultaneously, is engaged in …
Dave Lindorff – Why Wall Street Reporting is a Joke
It’s entertaining to watch and to read reports in the corporate media about the current stock market decline, which over the course of the last six business days erased $2.1 trillion in the market value of stocks of publicly-traded US corporations (and in a lot of ordinary Americans’ retirement savings). CNN, in an article on Wednesday, had a piece on …
EUGEN VON BÖHM-BAWERK – Productivity In America Now On Par With Agrarian Slave Economy
In the first episode we showed how the US became an unsustainable service sector based economy from the 1970s onward when service sector employment diverged from manufacturing without a corresponding boost in productivity. In the second episode we laid out the consequences that transition has had on labour in terms of lower wages and benefits. In addition, we reiterated our argument that monetary policy …
SERGEI SUPINSKY – Ukraine Cannot Pay Off Debts, Risks to Turn Into Another Greece
Earlier in August, Ukraine managed to avoid a technical default by paying off its $120 million eurobond coupon. The next payment, $500 million, is due to be made in September. “Creditors are always in a bad situation under these conditions – there’s no money to be had, but they still want their money. But I actually think there’s no chance that Ukraine’s going to be able to pay what they owe, and …
Jim Quinn – DEPARTMENT STORE RESULTS IMPLODING
The government issued their monthly retail sales this past week and four of the biggest department store chains in the country announced their quarterly results. The year over year retail sales increase of 2.4% is pitifully low in an economy that is supposedly in its sixth year of economic growth with a reported unemployment rate of only 5.3%. If all …