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Article Artículo

The Bubble and the Great Recession: The Need for Denial

(This post originally appeared on my Patreon page.)

The tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman brought a flood of news stories on the financial crisis. The housing bubble, whose collapse precipitated the crisis, was only mentioned in the background if at all.

In keeping with the general tenor of the commentary, Brookings brought in former Fed chair Ben Bernanke to present a paper saying the story of the Great Recession really was the financial crisis. To my knowledge, they did not have anyone making the case for the bubble.

I won’t go through the whole story here since I just did a paper on the topic. (I’m happy to say Paul Krugman largely agrees with me.) Rather I will say why I think there is such an aversion to acknowledging the importance of the housing bubble to the Great Recession.

The first reason to discount the bubble is that acknowledging its importance in the Great Recession highlights the immense failure of public policy that led to this disaster. The point is that the bubbles, and especially bubbles that drive the economy, are easy to see.

After largely tracking the overall rate of inflation for 100 years, house prices began to hugely outstrip inflation in 1996. This run-up in house prices should have been hard to miss. It was reported in government data that were published quarterly. The fact that there was no corresponding increase in rents and that vacancy rates were rising through the bubble years should have been a serious warning that something wasn’t right in the housing market. The deterioration of mortgage quality in the later years of the bubble was a widespread joke among people in the real estate business.

It should also have been easy to see that the bubble was driving the economy. Residential investment went from an average of less than 4.5 percent of GDP in the prior two decades to a peak of 6.8 percent of GDP in 2005. This is the GDP data that are published quarterly. How does an economist not notice this?

CEPR / September 21, 2018

Article Artículo

Brazil

Ecuador

Latin America and the Caribbean

World

Lawfare Comes to Ecuador

As the fortunes of South America’s “pink tide” have turned and right-wing movements have recaptured power, conservative judiciaries and legislatures, egged on by elite-controlled media cartels, have engaged in dubious judicial procedures against various left-wing figures. In 2015, Argentina elected a right-wing neoliberal president, Mauricio Macri, and former left-leaning president Cristina Kirchner was charged with treason and other crimes. In Brazil, the Senate impeached sitting president Dilma Rousseff ? though her alleged crimes were dismissed by federal prosecutors ? and replaced her with the conservative Michel Temer. More recently, Lula, who polls suggest would easily win reelection, has been convicted of corruption and jailed, despite the absence of material evidence backing the charges against him. This decade has effectively become one of politico-judicial persecution ? lawfare ? against pink tide political figures, as right-wing movements try to ensure that their left-wing rivals won’t return to power.

Ecuador’s former president Rafael Correa appears to be the latest victim of lawfare against left-wing politicians. On July 3, 2018, a court in Ecuador ordered Correa’s arrest and extradition following his failure to serve a subpoena to appear in court. Judge Daniella Camacho of the National Court of Justice alerted Interpol to detain Correa if he tries to leave Belgium, where now resides with his Belgian wife. His offer to depose testimony at the Ecuadorian diplomatic mission in Brussels was rejected.

Originally subpoenaed to appear in court in mid-June, Correa was included in an investigation concerning the attempted kidnapping of lawmaker Fernando Balda in 2012. A former member of Correa’s Alianza PAIS party, and Correa’s supporter in his 2006 presidential campaign, Balda quickly became a political adversary of Correa after criticizing him over what Balda claims was “arbitrary and exclusionary management” of Alianza PAIS’ national board, as well as later accusing Correa of wiretapping his political adversaries and seeking campaign financing from Colombia’s FARC insurgent guerrilla force. By 2009, Balda had left Alianza PAIS and joined the Patriotic Society Party ? led by former army colonel and ex-president Lucio Gutiérrez, a leading figure in the 2000 Ecuadorian coup who oversaw neoliberal reforms as president from 2003 to 2005 until he was removed by Congress for the alleged abandonment of his constitutional duties.

CEPR and Harrison Karlewicz / September 19, 2018