free 800 page book: Bubble Economics

Here is a free 800 page book from the World Economics Association

Bubble Economics

Paul D. Egan and Philip Soos

In Bubble Economics, Paul Egan and Philip Soos explore a depressed Australia in the 1840s, 1890s and 1930s. They detail recurrent patterns of boom-bust credit and asset cycles which heralded financial instability, particularly following speculation in commercial and residential land markets.A financial stability model is put forward to predict economic downturns which is based on Georgist, post-Keynesian and behavioural finance schools of economic thought, informed by data from 1830 to 2013. The trends in Australia’s current trade settings, residential property market and banking sector are ominously similar to the key precursors to Australia’s ‘Great Depression’ of the 1890s – a recession or depression may now be imminent. Egan and Soos expose ‘rentier economics’ in the land down under and discard the dominant neoclassical paradigm, bringing a fresh perspective to the intense debate about Australia’s economic future.

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Taking asset bubbles seriously

from Dean Baker

Last month at an International Monetary Fund conference, former Obama economic advisor Lawrence Summers harshly criticized outgoing Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke for comments he made this summer. Bernanke had raised the possibility of tapering the Fed’s purchase of treasury bonds, which would cause interest rates to rise. With the economy facing a prolonged slump, Summers argued, Bernanke should not even have talked about raising interest rates.

While Summers is correct that the economy remains far below its capacity, and therefore policy should be focused on boosting employment for the foreseeable future, there was actually a real problem that may have sparked Bernanke’s taper talk. The housing market was again approaching the price levels seen during the housing bubble, whose collapse six years ago precipitated the downturn and the financial crisis.

At the end of the second quarter of this year, the inflation-adjusted value of the Case-Shiller national home price index was more than 20 percent above its pre-bubble level. It was only 8 percent below its 2002 level, the point at which economists first began warning of a housing bubble.

More important than the current level of prices was the rate of change. House prices nationwide were up 10.1 percent from their level a year ago. In several markets prices were rising considerably more rapidly, with rates of price increase of more than 30 percent. Even if house prices were not yet out of line with fundamentals by the time of Bernanke’s taper talk, they soon would be in the markets showing rapid double digit price increases.

Housing bubbles are not funny

from Dean Baker

The United States has more than 20 million people unemployed, underemployed or out of the workforce altogether because of a burst housing bubble. We also have more than 10 million homeowners who are underwater in their mortgages. And, we have tens of millions of people approaching retirement who have seen most of their life’s savings disappear when plunging house prices eliminated most or all of the equity in their home.

This situation could have been prevented if the government had taken steps to stem the growth of the housing bubble before it reached such dangerous levels. It is incredible that the Bush administration’s economics team failed to see the dangers of the bubble. It is even more remarkable that Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and the Fed ignored the growth of the housing bubble. But even more astounding is the fact that no one in a position of authority has learned any lessons from this disaster.

At the moment, there are housing bubbles in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia that are arguably larger, relative to the size of their economies, than the one that collapsed and wrecked the U.S. economy. The basis for saying that house prices in these countries are in a bubble is that there has been a sharp increase in the sale prices of homes that has not been matched by a remotely corresponding increase in rents.

The housing bubble and what Greenspan should have done

from Dean Baker

In Washington policy circles, money and influence can be used to make even the most simple and obvious things complicated and confusing. This is certainly the case with the housing bubble and its aftermath. Four years into the housing bubble downturn, much of the country remains hopelessly confused about what happened, why it happened and who is to blame.