Update from FF Wiley and Ginger Snap

Posted on August 1, 2017 by ffwiley

If you’re reading this you probably subscribed to CYNICONOMICS back in the day, and we owe you an apology for CYNICONOMICS’s abrupt end. We expected to restart it, but just like entitlement reform it never happened. In any case, we appreciate that you took the time to review our research and writing. Thank you! And if you shared our work with friends and followers, thank you for that, too.

Now for the update—we finally started blogging again, as of today, although we decided to start a new blog. You’ll find our work at ffwiley.com. After reflecting on what we liked and didn’t like from older articles (reading your own moss-covered prose can be disturbing), the new blog may be improved, but you’ll be the judge of that. We’ll write about the usual topics and would be more than happy to see our former readers subscribe to the new blog.

And that’s not all—FF finally finished and published his book, which is titled Economics for Independent Thinkers: A Practical, No-Nonsense Guide to Understanding Economic Risks. You can learn more about it on this website, which includes sample chapters. Or, to buy it on Amazon, go here. (You’ll see that we didn’t wait for Susan Rice to “unmask” us. But we can always be FF and Ginger to you.)

Thank you again for showing interest in our work and sharing it with others!

FF Wiley and Ginger Snap

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2014 Most Viewed Posts

Posted on December 30, 2014 by ffwiley

We posted sporadically this year – with nothing at all after July – but added up our page views anyway. Here are the five most widely read posts, based on page views on CYNICONOMICS as well as three other sites that publish our articles and report our stats (Zero Hedge, Market Oracle and Seeking Alpha):

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Technical Notes for ‘Never Mind Their Distrust of Data and Forecasts…’

Posted on July 16, 2014 by ffwiley

This is a short appendix for our earlier post, “Never Mind Their Distrust of Data and Forecasts; Austrians Can Help You Predict the Economy,” in the usual Q&A format.

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Never Mind Their Distrust of Data and Forecasts; Austrians Can Help You Predict the Economy

Posted on July 16, 2014 by ffwiley

[O]f all the economic bubbles that have been pricked, few have burst more spectacularly than the reputation of economics itself.
– From The Economist, July 16, 2009.

It’s been five years since the The Economist magazine published the critical commentary  excerpted above. In hindsight, the noted reputational damage was neither lasting nor spectacular. As of today, we’d say it’s almost non-existent.

Mainstream economists continue to dominate their profession and wield huge influence on public policies. They merely needed to close ranks after the financial crisis and wait for people to forget that their key theories and models were wholly discredited.

Meanwhile, heterodox economists who stress credit market risks and financial fragilities – the Austrians, the Minskyites – remain stuck on the fringes of the field. It doesn’t much matter that the crisis validated their thinking.

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Technical Notes for ‘Planning for Future Rate Hikes…’

Posted on July 2, 2014 by ffwiley

This is a short appendix for our earlier post, “Planning for Future Rate Hikes: What Can History Tell Us that the Fed Won’t?,” presented in Q&A format.

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Planning for Future Rate Hikes: What Can History Tell Us that the Fed Won’t?

Posted on July 2, 2014 by ffwiley

It stands to reason that when the Fed eventually lifts interest rates, we’ll see the usual effects. After a sustained rise in rates, you can safely bet on:

  1. Fixed investment and business earnings dropping sharply
  2. GDP growth following investment and earnings lower
  3. Many people losing their jobs
  4. Risky assets performing poorly

These consequences follow not only from the arithmetic of debt service and present value calculations, but also from the mood swinging psychology of entrepreneurs, lenders and investors.

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Global Drag Threatens Worst U.S. Export Performance in Over 60 Years

Posted on June 19, 2014 by ffwiley

Ever since an über-strong U.S. dollar crushed the export sector in the mid-1980s, the U.S. economy hasn’t looked quite the same.

Exports picked up towards the end of the decade, helped along by the G-7’s historic 1985 powwow at New York’s Plaza Hotel, which led to a coordinated effort to slam back the dollar. Nonetheless, some export industries never fully recovered.

Fast forward to the present, and export performance may soon be as noteworthy as it was 30 years ago. Risks to the global economy (and exports) include turmoil in oil-producing nations, credit markets that are teetering in China and comatose in Europe, and the backside of Japan’s April sales tax hike.

Worse still, export growth already lags behind every one of the past ten expansions, even the 1980s, thanks to a drop in the first quarter:

exports1

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Unintended Consequences of Obama’s Student Loan Policies

Posted on June 12, 2014 by ffwiley

So this week, President Obama’s populist, class-warring, shut-out-the-legislature, ignore-the-long-term-consequences romp through every corner of life turned to the education sector.

His new policies on student loans include greater access to both payment reductions and loan forgiveness.

And, needless to say, his Rose Garden speech oozed election year politics.

As the Boston Herald put it: “This is nothing more than politics as official policy … the president’s shout-out to U.S. Rep. John Tierney, a vulnerable Democrat, at yesterday’s White House ceremony was just one of the clues.”

To be clear, student debt has become a huge problem that demands attention. Alongside other challenges, such as finding a decent job in a stagnant economy, student borrowers face daunting payment burdens that they’re failing to meet at record rates.

But the problem requires more than just a political instinct to bail out a wide swath of the voting public.

In a better world, policymakers would take a cold, hard look at the effects of federally-funded student loan programs, including the good and the bad. Here are a few such observations that you’re unlikely to hear from your president:

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Technical Notes for ‘The Untold Story’

Posted on June 3, 2014 by ffwiley

This is an appendix for our earlier post, “Where $1 of QE Goes: The Untold Story.” We’ll describe our use of the Fed’s flow of funds data in more detail, in Q&A format.

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Where $1 of QE Goes: The Untold Story

Posted on June 3, 2014 by ffwiley

“We don’t understand fully how large-scale asset purchase programs work to ease financial market conditions.”
– New York Fed President Bill Dudley

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that quantitative easing enabled the rich and the quick. It was a massive gift… It was deliberate in the sense that we were hoping to create the wealth effect… I hope that we do indeed succeed in being able to say in the end the wealth effect was more evenly distributed. I doubt it.”
– Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher

“Just as I thought it was going alright, I find out I’m wrong when I thought I was right, it’s always the same it’s just a shame, that’s all.”
– Genesis front man Phil Collins

Sometimes the most interesting results are the ones you didn’t see coming.

We recently picked through financial flows data looking for clues about where a dollar of quantitative easing (QE) ends up.

For example, we wondered who parts with the bonds that find new homes on the Fed’s balance sheet. Dealers sometimes pass bonds straight from the Treasury to the Fed, but are they buying other QE-ready bonds mostly from households, pension funds, foreigners or other financial institutions? Also, can financial flows help us to guess at how much (if any) a dollar of QE adds to spending?

We didn’t expect clear answers and were surprised to stumble across this:

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