The Unassuming Economist

From the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco:

“Forecasting future economic developments is a tricky business, but the term spread has a strikingly accurate record for forecasting recessions. Periods with an inverted yield curve are reliably followed by economic slowdowns and almost always by a recession. While the current environment appears unique compared with recent economic history, statistical evidence suggests that the signal in the term spread is not diminished. These findings indicate concerns about the scenario of an inverting yield curve. Any forecasts that include such a scenario as the most likely outcome carry the risk that an economic slowdown might follow soon thereafter.”

 

Figure 1
The term spread and recessions

Note: Gray bars indicate NBER recession dates.

 

Figure 2
Estimated probabilities of recession based on term spread

Note: Gray bars indicate NBER recession dates.

 

From a new blog by Mark J. Perry:

“In Warren Buffett’s 2017 annual letter to shareholders, released on Saturday, he discussed the ten-year bet he made in 2007 that an unmanaged, low-cost S&P-500 index fund would out-perform an actively managed group of high-cost hedge funds over a ten-year period from 2008 to 2017, when performance is measured on a basis net of fees, costs, and all expenses. See posts here, here and here for past coverage of Buffett’s famous bet.”

From Branko Milanovic and the Globalist:

“Under the influence of Amartya Sen, we have been “nudged” towards a reassessment of the relative merits of “The theory of moral sentiments “ (TMS) and “The Wealth of Nations” (WN). Sen has done a lot to bring Smith’s early work out of relative obscurity where it was consigned by two centuries of success of The Wealth of Nations.

What remains true is that many people around the world continue to have a remarkably distorted view of The Wealth of Nations. Not much beyond the (in)famous “invisible hand of the market.”

Bad government

In reality, there are no “good guys” in The Wealth in Nations. Of course, the government comes in for special criticism.

Smith argues against its rapacity in putting up high tariffs, its foolishness in following mercantilist policies, its pettiness in constraining the system of “natural liberty,” its attempts to decide where people should live (the law of settlement, a hukou-like system was then in existence in Britain).

(…)

Bad businessmen

But businessmen are no better. As soon as they are given half a chance, perhaps just after having gotten rid of some particularly nefarious government regulation, they are back to plotting how to “restrain” the market, to pay suppliers less, destroy competitors, cheat workers (see today’s IT companies, Walmart, Amazon).

In the famous quote, “people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices” (Book 1, Ch. 8).

In their mad ambition, they try to rule the world (see Davos): “…the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind” (Book 4, Ch. 3, p. 621).”

 

Read the full article here.

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