Han pekar på att den expansiva penningpolitiken gjort det möjligt för företag som går dåligt att ta nya väldigt billiga lån och betala av på deras äldre och dyrare lån. Företagen överlever, men utan att gå särskilt bra och utan att investera.
“The fundamental tenet of capitalism, which holds that some bad companies need to fail to make way for new and better ones, is being rewritten,” says Alan Bloom, global head of restructuring at Ernst & Young. “Many European companies are just declining slowly and have an urgent need for new management, a revised capital structure or at worst to be allowed to fail,” he adds.Intressant nog så var de tre länderna i Europa som hade lägst andel företag som gick i konkurs år 2011 Grekland, Italien och Spanien: färre än 30 per 10 000 företag. Detta trots att var tredje företag i dessa länder gick med förlust! Bankerna har redan tagit stora förluster i krisen och vill nu inte realisera ännu större förluster genom att låta företagen som lånat gå i konkurs.
Michael Stothard, "Companies: The rise of the zombie", FT 8 januari
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Uppdatering 15 januari
Jérémie Cohen-Setton har en väldigt bra översikt över bloggosfärdiskussionen om penningpolitiska omvändningar under 2012. I USA har Fed tagit till sig "The Evans Rule" och Charles Evans har enligt The Atlantic gått från "dissenter to intellectual leader" på mindre än ett år. Mark Carney som är chef för kanadensiska centralbanken och snart Bank of England har tagit ställning för en ännu mer radikal politik: NGDP targeting. ECB är konservativare. Redan har de två gånger under krisen -- 2008 och 2011 -- börjat höja räntorna och fått vända om igen. Karl Whelan på Forbes efterlyser ett nytänkande från ECB likt Feds. Simon Wren-Lewis säger däremot att ECB:s open market transactions, att de köper statsobligationer på marknaden, visserligen inte var någon stor innovation vad gäller hur centralbanker arbetar, men ändå en ganska stor mental omställning från ECB:s sida.
Jérémie Cohen-Setton, "State-dependent monetary policy guidance", 17 december
Uppdatering 25 januari
Gavyn Davies skriver om den avgående Bank of England-chefen Mervyn Kings analys av läget. Davies:
"The governor says the disappointing recovery in the economy has been due to three factors: the squeeze in real take home pay, the deleveraging of the banks, and the crisis in the eurozone. Note that there is no mention here of the UK’s fiscal tightening, or the size of the multiplier, which others would want to emphasise.Alltså, King förespråkar inte någon keynesiansk lösning i form av mer fiskal stimulans -- som t ex Olivier Blanchard gör -- och uttrycker också skepsis mot QE:s kraft. Närmare bestämt att QE får mindre och mindre effekt desto mer sådan politik redan genomförts.
This is all familiar territory, but the governor has been developing a new strain of thought in recent months, and this has come to fruition in this speech. It is that quantitative easing is becoming less effective, because it has worked by bringing forward economic activity from future periods, rather than by boosting the underlying level of activity over the long term."
Davies, "Mervyn King's valedictory plan", 24 januari
Annars så är väl den stora penningpolitiska nyheten denna veckan att Japans regering pressat centralbanken att börja föra en mycket mer expansiv penningpolitik: ett tillgångsköpprogram á la QE, och höjt inflationsmål från 1 till 2 procent. Bland andra den tyska regeringen har uttryckt skepsis mot Japans politik eftersom de ser den som ett led i ett "valutakrig". Intressant att just Japan ändrat sin ekonomiska politik, med tanke på att "japanisering" används som förkortad beskrivning för "långvarig stagnation" i den europeiska krisdiskussionen.
Jonathan Soble, "Reluctant BoJ given deflation-beating role", FT 22 januari
Ben McLannahan, "Wages in way of Abe's war on deflation", FT 25 januari
David Keohane, "Koo, Posen, and other Abenomics dissenters", FT Alphaville 17 januari
Cardiff Garcia på FT Alphaville har ett intressant inlägg om Feds tänkande.
Cardiff Garcia, "NGDP level targeting: Yellen it from the rooftops, but nobody heard", FT Alphaville 23 januari
Chris Giles sammanfattar på FT:s The World-blogg Draghis tal i Davos. Draghi menar att 2012 var året för "relaunching of the euro" och att 2013 blir implementeringens år. Giles:
"Mario Draghi has laid out his vision for the euro and European Central Bank. While 2012 was “the year of relaunching the euro”, he said 2013 was the year of implementation. Believing the hard work still needed to save the euro as absolutely worth it, he laid out the steps still needed. Notable was that these were essentially political and, if it comes to pass, the ECB can rather put its feet up and watch others do the heavy lifting this year.FT The World-bloggen, "Davos day three", 25 januari
What does he want?
First, continued fiscal consolidation – front-loaded to regain market confidence, concentrated on current spending, not increased taxation or public investment cuts.
Second, structural reforms. The focus on supply side action has become very attractive to central bankers because it removes any obligation to raise demand themselves. Mr Draghi sees supply side reforms as increasing competitiveness, exports and jobs. He was not specific about policies, nor how quickly he expects them to affect growth and jobs.
Third, no change in the ECB’s framework to maintain price stability, which he said was sufficient. Commenting on the Federal Reserve’s attempts to steer private sector expectations towards investment by committing to keep policy loose until unemployment falls below 6.5 per cent, he said: “We have given plenty of evidence that we can do the same within the existing framework”.
So apart from sitting back and relaxing and watching his prediction that calmer financial markets will be reflected in a restoration of eurozone growth in the second half of year, what is on his agenda? The most concrete thing was building the capability of the proposed single supervisor of banks in Frankfurt."
Uppdatering 31 oktober 2014
Paul Krugman "ber om ursäkt" till Japan för sin kritik av deras policies under de "förlorade decennierna"; nu, menar han, har ECB och svenska Riksbanken visat attjapanerna faktiskt inte var sämst på hantering av stagnation.
"Western economists were scathing in their criticisms of Japanese policy.Krugman, "Apologizing to Japan", New York Times 31 oktober
I was one of those critics... And these days, I often find myself thinking that we ought to apologize. ...
The ... West has, in fact, fallen into a slump similar to Japan’s — but worse. And that wasn’t supposed to happen. In the 1990s, we assumed that if the United States or Western Europe found themselves facing anything like Japan’s problems, we would respond much more effectively... But we didn’t, even though we had Japan’s experience to guide us. ... And Western workers have experienced a level of suffering that Japan has managed to avoid.
What policy failures am I talking about? ... Japanese fiscal policy didn’t do enough to help growth; Western fiscal policy actively destroyed growth.
Or consider monetary policy. The Bank of Japan ... has received a lot of criticism for reacting too slowly to the slide into deflation, and then for being too eager to raise interest rates at the first hint of recovery. That criticism is fair, but Japan’s central bank never did anything as wrongheaded as the European Central Bank’s decision to raise rates in 2011, helping to send Europe back into recession. And even that mistake is trivial compared with the awesomely wrongheaded behavior of ... Sweden’s central bank, which raised rates despite below-target inflation and relatively high unemployment, and appears, at this point, to have pushed Sweden into outright deflation. ..."
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