ARticle 8

The first thing that caught my attention was the way monetary policy was described as "creature of each nations domestic politics" and that the Narrative of Central Bank Omnipotence is in turn devolving into a Narrative of central Bank competition. This structural change in the 21st century is happening because of massive global debt. Instead of international economic cooperation everyone is competing and things just don't look too good. As discussed early in Micro, trade and cooperation is pretty good. Like in the prisoners dilemma. If we could only all trust each other everyone would be better off. But as humans we are incapable of it and put our self-interest ahead. Global trade volumes everywhere peaked in Quarter 4 and quarter 3 in 2014 and have declined since. I can tell that isn't exactly a good thing but I can't tell to what degree, just like the article predicts. But apparently the small percentage of decline in exports is kinda rare. With these small percentage declines its "next to impossible for a real economy to expand when exports are contracting" in the way they are today. I like how the dude says "real economy". It's funny how calling things "real" in economics is taken so seriously. Person A: blah blah blah percentage decline blah blah. Person B: Yes but is it a real percentage?? According to the this dude the U.S is already experiencing a recession. Luckily he gets right too it, unlike Stockman who just can't stop playing around and can no longer be taken seriously because of his weird choice of words. Anyway, yes, recession. A "mild" recession. An "earnings recession" because "the decline in export values has only started to show up as a decline in export volumes" which is "pretty much all macroeconomic evils". I like this guy, straightforward, doesn't mess around, cool dude cool dude.