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LT #8 - Top Links - Dec 2022

lefttimes.substack.com

LT #8 - Top Links - Dec 2022

LeftTimes is now on Substack! Long-covid impacts by demographic. The African debt crisis, solutions, or lack thereof. Monetary policy, inflation, rents, and signs of recession.

Yoshi Tryba
Jan 3, 2023
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LeftTimes is now on Substack!

With LeftTimes sourcing more and more from Substack writers, it only made sense to move this newsletter over as well. This should make it easier for you to follow and, over time, enable me to enrich the content and experience. For now, this will remain a free monthly newsletter featuring top articles.

How the debt crisis is hitting Africa:

“The situation in Ghana is bad, but it is by no means alone. Whereas in 2008 the African continent was largely insulated from the shock of the global banking crisis, it is now, as a result of being more integrated into the global economy, feeling the pinch from global movements in prices and interest rates. Since 2020, Zambia, Chad, Mali and Ethiopia have either defaulted or entered talk to restructure their debt. Tanzania, Mozambique and Benin have attracted emergency support from the IMF.”

Chartbook
Chartbook #181: Finance and the polycrisis (6): Africa's debt crisis
On December 13 Ghana reached staff-level agreement on a $3 bn IMF credit package. In addition it is seeking to negotiate a 30 percent haircut with private creditors on tens of billions in bonds. Already in September Ghana’s 2026 eurobonds plunged to a record low of 59.30 cents on the US dollar. By the end of October yields had surged to 38.6 %, up from …
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6 months ago · 61 likes · Adam Tooze

“Ghana’s government, however, didn’t decide to inflate the debt away; instead it just defaulted. This was a wise move. 58% of Ghana’s government debt is owed to foreigners, so defaulting on this drastically lowers the country’s overall government debt burden even as it also makes the government less vulnerable to further downward currency movements. The default will hurt, for sure, but it will also restore confidence and make it much easier to get a bailout from the IMF — which Ghana is currently doing.”

Noahpinion
Ghana, you were doing so well!
(Note: In the initial version of this post, I read an exchange rate chart upside down, which caused one paragraph to be wrong. I have now fixed the chart and updated the relevant text. The basic conclusions remain the same!) So, unfortunately, it’s time for another one of…
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6 months ago · 153 likes · 61 comments · Noah Smith

How a land value tax could be a solution to SA’s problems:

Progress and Poverty
How to Revive South Africa
South Africa has a long and contentious history with land ownership and property rights. Current land ownership patterns remain unchanged from the colonial and Apartheid era, with white South Africans owning over 80% of the land in the country while making up less than 10% of the total population. This vast in…
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6 months ago · 18 likes · 4 comments · The Afro Georgist

Signs of economic trouble in both the US and the UK:

Chartbook
Chartbook #184 - Nostalgia for decline in deconvergent Britain
After a year of political turmoil and financial embarrassment, Britain ends 2022 shaken. There is a new spate of talk about national decline. Once again the UK is falling behind. The outlook is uncertain. It is symptomatic that Perry Anderson chose already in 2020, to author yet another gigantic essay for the…
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5 months ago · 122 likes · 18 comments · Adam Tooze
Full Stack Economics
9 charts that show the economy is kind of a mess right now
Prices rose by 7.1 percent over the last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced yesterday. That’s the lowest annual inflation rate we’ve seen this year, but it’s still far above the Fed…
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6 months ago · 34 likes · 2 comments · Timothy B Lee

Monetary policy at this time:

“The Gordian knot we find ourselves in now is that good economic news is bad financial news. A strong economy means that the Fed will keep hiking rates which is bad for financial assets. Such was the case with the recent strong jobs report, which caused markets to crash. If we had an actual recession now, stocks would paradoxically explode upward because the Fed would have to revert back to cheap money. This alone says everything about how the circuits of value within finance capital have grown disconnected from the economic base.”

Novum Newsletter
"What if your entire worldview was just because of near-zero interest rates?"
Recently, I came across a piece in Bloomberg which explores how the entire worldview of newer traders on Wall St. was unraveling. Since 2009, the Federal Reserve has kept interest rates at or near zero. Many other central banks did the same. For over a decade, banks could borrow money for little to nothing. It became …
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6 months ago · 19 likes · 9 comments · Anton Cebalo
Apricitas Economics
Monetary Policy in a Shortage Economy
Thanks for reading! If you haven’t subscribed, please click the button below: By subscribing you’ll join over 19,000 people who read Apricitas weekly! Otherwise, liking or sharing is the best way to support my work. Thank you! I have been thinking a lot about this chart, and about János Kornai…
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5 months ago · 69 likes · 7 comments · Joseph Politano

The extent and demographics of long Covid

CEPR provides some great data summarizing the extent of long covid. Spoiler: there’s significant differences by age, gender, race, income, and geography….

And (just one!) political article to kick off 2023:

“Indeed, one of the things that’s so striking about the 2022 crossover vote data is that it’s extremely rare to have a situation like the one we saw in Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania where Democrats won swing voters while doing badly on turnout.

In a normal year, you either get great turnout and do well with independents (like in 2018) or you get crappy turnout and tank with independents (2014). But in 2022, Democrats did badly on turnout — admittedly not nearly as bad as in 2014 — while nevertheless winning a bunch of key races thanks to crossover voters.”

Slow Boring
The midterms should be a stake through the heart of the mobilization myth
In recent years, I’ve become obsessed with making an argument that would have struck people as too obvious to even write about 20 years ago: Swing voters are real (as I wrote for Vox in 2018), and you can’t win elections by mobilizing a secret non-voting majority of leftists…
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6 months ago · 233 likes · 228 comments · Matthew Yglesias

The usual infographic…

And finally, the podcast of the month on AI:


Thanks for reading LeftTimes! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. - Yoshi

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