Defaulting banks - where will it stop?

[Peter Lemkin]

http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=29970

Another VERY good talk by Hudson about his forthcoming book - enlightening and depressing in the extreme!

Take a REAL 'crash' course in Economics - as you've not heard it before!!!!!

[Peter Lemkin]

I just read through their last two year's predictions on economy - they had it right, when most others had it wrong. Here is their latest:

- Public announcement GEAB N°30 (December 16, 2008) -

http://www.leap2020.eu/GEAB-N-30-is-avai...a2567.html

LEAP/E2020 anticipates than the unfolding global systemic crisis will experience in March 2009 a new tipping point of similar magnitude to the September 2008 one. According to our team, at that period of the year, the general public will become aware of three major destabilizing processes at work in the global economy, i.e.:

• the length of the crisis
• the explosion of unemployment worldwide
• the risk of sudden collapse of all capital-based pension systems

A whole range of psychological factors will contribute to this tipping point: general awareness in Europe, America and Asia that the crisis has escaped from the control of every public authority, whether national or international; that it is severely affecting all regions of the world, even if some are more affected than others (see GEAB N°28); that it is directly hitting hundreds of millions of people in the “developed” world; and that it is only worsening as its consequences reveal throughout the real economy. National governments and international institutions only have three months left to prepare themselves to the next blow, one that could go along severe risks of social chaos. The countries which are not properly equipped to cope with a surge in unemployment and major risks on pensions will be seriously destabilized by this new public awareness.

In this 30th issue of the GEAB, the LEAP/E2020 team describes these three destabilizing processes (two of them are described in this public announcement) and gives recommendations to cope with the surge in risks. In addition, this issue also provides the opportunity to make an objective assessment of the reliability of LEAP/E2020's anticipations and specifies a number of methodological aspects of the analytical process used. In 2008, LEAP/E2020's success rate reaches 80%, and even 86% when it comes to strictly socio-econimic anticipations. In a year of major upheavals, our teal ise altogether quite proud of this result.

The crisis will last at least until the end of 2010

Evolution of the US money base and indications of related major US crisis periods (1910 – 2008) - Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis / Mish’s Global Economic Analysis
As we already explained in GEAB N°28, the crisis will affect in different ways the different regions of the world. However, and LEAP/E2020 wishes to be very clear on that aspect, contrary to the dominant stance today (coming from those experts who denied the fact that a crisis was coming up three years ago, who denied that it was global two years ago, and who denied the fact that it was systemic six months ago), we anticipate that the minimum duration of the decanting phase of the crisis is 3 years (1). It shall be finished neither in spring 2009, nor in summer 2009, nor at the beginning of 2010. It is only towards the end of 2010 that the situation will start stabilizing again and improving a little in some regions of the world, i.e. Asia and the Eurozone, as well as in countries producing energy, mineral and food commodities (2). Elsewhere, it will continue; in particular in the US and UK, and in all the countries depending on their economy, were the duration could approximate a decade. In fact these countries should not expect any real return to growth before 2018.

Moreover no one should imagine that the improvement at the end of 2010 will correspond to a return of high growth. The recovery will take long. For instance, stock markets will take a decade to return to levels comparable to 2007, if they ever return to that. Remember that it took twenty years before Wall Street resumed its 1920 levels. Well, according to LEAP/E2020, the present crisis is deeper and longer than in the 1930s. The general public will gradually become aware of the long-term aspect of this crisis in the coming three months and this situation will immediately trigger two tendencies carrying with them socio-economic instability: fear of the future and enhanced criticism towards leaders.

The risk of sudden collapse of all capital-based pension systems
Finally, among the various consequences of the crisis for dozens of millions of people in the US, Canada, UK, Japan, Netherlands and Denmark in particular (3), there is the fact that, from the end of the year 2008 onward, news about major losses on the part of the organizations in charge of managing the financial assets supposed to finance pensions will multiply. The OECD anticipates that pension funds will lose 4,000 billion USD in 2008 only (4). In the Netherlands (5) as well as in the United Kingdom (6), monitoring organizations recently blew the whistle asking for an emergency contribution reappraisal and a State intervention. In the United States, growing numbers of announcements call for contribution increases and benefit reductions (7), knowing that it is only in a few weeks time that most of these funds will start calculating their total losses (8). Most of them are still deluding themselves about their capacity to build up again their capital after the markets turn around. In March 2009, when pension fund managers, pensioners and governments will become simultaneously aware of the fact that the crisis is there to last, that it coincides with the « baby-boomer » generation’s age of retirement and that the markets will not resume their 2007 levels until many long years (9), chaos will flood this sector and governments will reach the moment when they will be compelled to nationalize all these funds. And Argentina, who took this decision a few months ago already, will appear a pioneer.

All the trends described above are already at work. Their combination and the public becoming aware of the consequences they could entail, will result in the great collective psychological trauma of Spring 2009, when everyone will realize that we are all trapped into a crisis worse than in the 1930s and that there is no possible way out in the short-term. The impact on the world’s collective mentalities of people and policy-makers will be decisive and modify significantly the course of the crisis in its next stage. Based on greater disillusion and fewer beliefs, social and political instability will settle down worldwide.

Finally, this GEAB N°30 presents a series of 13 questions & answers designed to enhance savers'/investors'/decision-makers' capacity to understand and anticipate the next stages of the global systemic crisis:
1. Is this crisis different from the previous crises which affected capitalism?
2. Is this crisis different from the 1930s crisis?
3. Is the crisis as serious in Europe or Asia as in the USA?
4. Are the current actions undertaken by public authorities worldwide sufficient to curb the crisis?
5. What are the major risks still weighting on the world financial system? And are all savings equal in front of the crisis?
6. Is the Eurozone a true protection shield against the worst aspects of the crisis and what should the Eurozone do to improve its protection status?
7. Is the Bretton Woods system (in its 1970s last version) currently collapsing? Should the Euro take the place of the Dollar?
8. What can be expected from the next G20 meeting in London?
9. Do you think that deflation is right now the biggest threat to economies worldwide?
10. Do you think that the Obama administration will be able to prevent the USA from sinking into what you called the ‘Very Great US Depression’?
11. In terms of currencies, beyond your anticipation of the Dollar resuming its collapse in the very next months, do you think that the UK Pound and the Swiss Franc are still currencies with an international status?
12. Do you think that the CDS market is about to implode in the coming months? And what could be the consequences of such a phenomenon?
13. Is there a ‘US Treasury Bonds Bubble” about to burst?

---------
Notes:

(1) It can be useful to read on this crisis a very interesting contribution by Robert Guttmann published in the 2nd half of 2008 on the website Revues.org, supported by the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme Paris-Nord.

(2) As a matter of fact, commodities have already started contributing to boost the market of international sea transport. Source: Financial Times, 12/14/2008

(3) It is in those countries that capital-based pension systems were most developed (see GEAB N°23) but is also the case of Ireland. Source: Independent, 11/30/2008

(4) Source: OECD, 11/12/2008

(5) Source: NU.NL, 12/15/2008

(6) Source: BBC, 12/09/2008

(7) Sources: WallStreetJournal, 11/17/2008; Phillyburbs, 11/25/2008; RockyMountainNews, 11/19/2008

(8) Source: CNBC, 12/05/2008

(9) Not to mention the effect of an explosion of the US T-Bond bubble on pension funds. See Q&A, GEAB N°30.

Mardi 16 Décembre 2008

[David Guyatt]

It is a really serious problem Peter. I sent a copy to a pension fund manager I know who responded saying that he also believed the US dollar would cease being the world's reserve currency as a result of these massive problems.

The future ain't bright at all.

[Peter Lemkin]

It is a really serious problem Peter. I sent a copy to a pension fund manager I know who responded saying that he also believed the US dollar would cease being the world's reserve currency as a result of these massive problems.

The future ain't bright at all.

These economists and political analysts have an amazingly good track-record with their predictions - look at their past ones on their website! Now they are saying NO substantial growth in US or UK until at least 2018!.....talk about social unrest - not to mention many hundreds of millions suffering greatly. Sadly, the nature of the beast is such that they'll likely have to resort to war or wars to divert attention - as the leaders would be guillotined, as they were in Paris once upon a time.....

No, things look very grim and this is only the beginning of the slide!

[Peter Lemkin]

The Associated Press has revealed that many of the nation’s largest banks are claiming they can’t track how they’re using the billions of dollars they have received in aid from US taxpayers. The Associated Press contacted twenty-one banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings? And what’s the plan for the rest? None of the banks provided specific answers. When Congress approved the massive bailout, it attached nearly no strings to the money, and the Treasury Department never asked the banks how it would be spent.

[Peter Lemkin]

Was ist ein Einbruch in eine Bank gegen die Gründung einer Bank?
What is robbing a bank compared with founding a bank?
- B. Brecht

[Jan Klimkowski]

Taxes & laws are for ordinary working folk, not banker insiders:

Supporters of Barack Obama's pick for a top cabinet post today sought to downplay reports that he briefly employed an ineligible worker and made more than $42,000 worth of errors on tax forms, in the hopes of cooling the brewing trouble before it can halt Timothy Geithner's confirmation as US treasury secretary.

The matter is the first speed bump in an otherwise smooth series of confirmation hearings, as other Obama nominees received relatively warm treatment from the Senate committees charged with approving them.

Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, yesterday told members of the Senate finance committee that mistakes on his tax forms early within the last decade were unintentional, and that he had repaid the more than $42,000 owed, including interest. It was also disclosed yesterday that Geithner employed a housekeeper whose work eligibility had expired during the period in which she worked for him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan...nfirmation

Obama's stinking already...

[Jan Klimkowski]

And the paid institutional cheerleaders are, um, altering their advice to clients to buy equities in October. tupido2:

http://www.tradingmarkets.com/.site/news....

Societe Generale said on Thursday that the United States' economy looks likely to enter a depression and China's could implode.

In a highly bearish note, veteran cross asset strategist Albert Edwards said investors should now cut equity exposure after a turn-of-the-year rally and prepare for a rout.

He predicted that the S&P 500 index of U.S. stocks could be set for a fall of nearly 70 percent from recent levels.

Edwards also raised the danger of a global trade war with China.

"While economic data in developed economies increasingly reflects depression rather than a deep recession, the real surprise in 2009 may lie elsewhere," Edwards wrote.

"It is becoming clear that the Chinese economy is imploding and this raises the possibility of regime change. To prevent this, the authorities would likely devalue the yuan. A subsequent trade war could see a re-run of the Great Depression."

Edwards has long been one of the most bearish analysts in London, first with Dresdner Kleinwort and then with SocGen.

But he called in October for clients to increase their exposure to equities, which he said were due a rebound.

"We believe that the market is (now) set to quickly slide sharply towards our 500 target for the S&P," he said.

The S&P 500 stock index is currently at 842, up about 14 percent since hitting a low in November.

[Jan Klimkowski]

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b87aa880-e269-...ck_check=1

Citigroup’s Corporate Special Opportunities hedge fund is returning only 3 cents on the dollar to investors, underscoring the depths of the difficulties at the alternative investment unit once headed by the bank’s current chief executive, Vikram Pandit.

The amount being returned is less than had been expected when the company decided to wind up the fund last year and came as bruising news for investors who had been prevented from withdrawing their money since January 2008.

Citigroup also stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars it lent to CSO. It provived the fund with as much as $450m in credit lines and $320m in equity, while also placing assets with a nominal value of $1bn that it had bought in the fund.

Without the support from Citigroup, the hedge fund, which invested in corporate debt, would have had negative equity, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.

“Every fund that invested in bank loans in Europe and used leverage did not survive,” a Citi spokesperson says. “At least we are giving investors cash.”

:pcguru:

[Jan Klimkowski]

Yup. Bernanke is a fraud as well as an insider crook. :hello:


http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/01/b...ssion.html

"Bernanke an Expert on the Great Depression??"


One of the reasons I am partial to Australians is that they are critical thinkers, not easily cowed by authority or conventional wisdom.

In the US, one of the reasons that Fed chair Ben Bernanke is given so much deference (aside from the fact that we treat people in positions of power with kid gloves) is that he is regarded as an expert on the Great Depression, and has also studied Japan's Lost Decade.

Steve Keen, author of Debunking Economics and professor at the University of Western Sydney, has taken a look at some of Bernanke's writings on the Great Depression and finds them wanting, Serious wanting. I've read some of Bernanke's work on Jaoan, and quite a few of his speeches, and was bothered by some of the assumptions and omissions. Keen tears into Bernanke with a gusto that I find refreshing.

This is a long excerpt from a much longer and worthwhile post (hat tip reader Tom):

A link to this blog....reminded me of Bernanke’s book Essays on the Great Depression, which I’ve been aware of for some time but have yet to read. I’ll make amends on that front early this year; fortunately, an extract from Chapter One is available as a preview on the Princeton site (I couldn’t locate the promised eBook anywhere!; in what follows, when I quote Bernanke it is from the original journal paper published in 1995, rather than this chapter).

To put it mildly, Bernanke’s analysis is not promising.

The most glaring problem on first glance is that, despite Bernanke’s claim in Chapter One “THE MACROECONOMICS OF THE GREAT DEPRESSION: A Comparative Approach” that he will survey “our current understanding of the Great Depression”, there is only a brief, twisted reference to Irving Fisher’s Debt Deflation Theory of Great Depressions, and no discussion at all of Hyman Minsky’s contemporary Financial Instability Hypothesis.

While he does discuss Fisher’s theory, he provides only a parody of it–in which he nonetheless notes that Fisher’s policy advice was influential:

Fisher envisioned a dynamic process in which falling asset and commodity prices created pressure on nominal debtors, forcing them into distress sales of assets, which in turn led to further price declines and financial difficulties. His diagnosis led him to urge President Roosevelt to subordinate exchange-rate considerations to the need for reflation, advice that (ultimately) FDR followed.

He then readily dismisses Fisher’s theory, for reasons that are very instructive:

Fisher’s idea was less influential in academic circles, though, because of the counterargument that debt-deflation represented no more than a redistribution from one group (debtors) to another (creditors). Absent implausibly large differences in marginal spending propensities among the groups, it was suggested, pure redistributions should have no significant macroeconomic effects. ” (Bernanke 1995, p. 17)

This is a perfect example of the old (and very apt!) joke that an economist is someone who, having heard that something works in practice, then ripostes “Ah! But does it work in theory?”.

It is also–I’m sorry, there’s just no other word for it–mind-numbingly stupid. A debt-deflation transfers income from debtors to creditors? From, um, people who default on their mortgages to the people who own the mortgage-backed securities, or the banks?

Well then, put your hands up, all those creditors who now feel substantially better off courtesy of our contemporary debt-deflation…

What??? No-one? But surely you can see that in theory…

The only way that I can make sense of this nonsense is that neoclassical economists assume that an increase in debt means a transfer of income from debtors to creditors (equal to the servicing cost of the debt), and that this has no effect on the economy apart from redistributing income from debtors to creditors. So rising debt is not a problem.

Similarly, a debt-deflation then means that current nominal incomes fall, relative to accumulated debt that remains constant. This increases the real value of interest payments on the debt, so that a debt-deflation also causes a transfer from debtors to creditors–though this time in real (inflation-adjusted) terms.

Do I have to spell out the problem here? Only to neoclassical economists, I expect: during a debt-deflation, debtors don’t pay the interest on the debt–they go bankrupt. So debtors lose their assets to the creditors, and the creditors get less–losing both their interest payments and large slabs of their principal, and getting no or drastically devalued assets in return. Nobody feels better off during a debt-deflation (apart from those who have accumulated lots of cash beforehand). Both debtors and creditors feel and are poorer, and the problem of non-payment of interest and non-repayment of principal often makes creditors comparatively worse off than debtors (just ask any of Bernie Madoff’s ex-clients).

Having dismissed–and barely even comprehended–the best contemporary explanation of the Great Depression, Bernanke is now trapped repeating history. It is painfully obvious that the real cause of this current financial crisis was the excessive build-up of debt during preceding speculative manias dating back to the mid-1980s. The real danger now is that, on top of this debt mountain, we are starting to experience the slippery slope of falling prices.

In other words, the cause of our current financial crisis is debt combined with deflation–precisely the forces that Irving Fisher described as the causes of the Great Depression back in 1933.

Fisher was in some senses a predecessor of Bernanke: though he was never on the Federal Reserve, he was America’s most renowned academic economist during the early 20th century. He ruined his reputation for aeons to come by also being a newspaper pundit and cheerleader for the Roaring Twenties stock market boom (and he ruined his fortune by putting his money where his mouth was and taking out huge margin loan positions on the back of the considerable wealth he earned from inventing the Rolodex).

Chastened and effectively bankrupted, he turned his mind to working out what on earth had gone wrong, and after about three years he came up with the best explanation of how Depressions occur (prior to Minsky’s brilliant blending of Marx, Keynes, Fisher and Schumpeter in his Financial Instability Hypothesis [here's another link to this paper]). In his Econometrica paper, Fisher argued that the process that leads to a Depression is the following:

“(1) Debt liquidation leads to distress selling and to

(2) Contraction of deposit currency, as bank loans are paid off, and to a slowing down of velocity of circulation. This contraction of deposits and of their velocity, precipitated by distress selling, causes

(3) A fall in the level of prices, in other words, a swelling of the dollar. Assuming, as above stated, that this fall of prices is not interfered with by reflation or otherwise, there must be

(4) A still greater fall in the net worths of business, precipitating bankruptcies and

(5) A like fall in profits, which in a “capitalistic,” that is, a private-profit society, leads the concerns which are running at a loss to make

(6) A reduction in output, in trade and in employment of labor. These losses, bankruptcies, and unemployment, lead to

(7) Pessimism and loss of confidence, which in turn lead to

(8) Hoarding and slowing down still more the velocity of circulation. The above eight changes cause

(9) Complicated disturbances in the rates of interest, in particular, a fall in the nominal, or money, rates and a rise in the real, or commodity, rates of interest.” (Econometrica, 1933, Volume 1, p. 342)...

In its own way, this is a very simple process to both understand and to model...

So why didn’t Bernanke–and other neoclassical economists–understand Fisher’s explanation and develop it?

Because an essential aspect of Fisher’s reasoning was the need to abandon the fiction that a market economy is always in equilibrium.

The notion that a market economy is in equilibrium at all times is of course absurd: if it were true, prices, incomes–even the state of the weather–would always have to be “just right” at all times, and there would be no economic news at all, because the news would always be that “everything is still perfect”. Even neoclassical economists implicitly acknowledge this by the way they analyse the impact of tariffs for example, by showing to their students how, by increasing prices, tariffs drive the supply above the equilibrium level and drive the demand below it.

The reason neoclassical economists cling to the concept of equilibrium is that, for historical reasons, it has become a dominant belief within that school that one can only model the economy if it is assumed to be in equilibrium.

From the perspective of real sciences–and of course engineering–that is simply absurd. The economy is a dynamic system, and like all dynamic systems in the real world, it will be normally out of equilibrium. That is not a barrier to mathematically modelling such systems however–one simply has to use “differential equations” to do so. There are also many very sophisticated tools that have been developed to make this much easier today–largely systems engineering and control theory technology (such as Simulink, Vissim, etc.)–than it was centuries ago when differential equations were first developed.

Some neoclassicals are aware of this technology, but in my experience, it’s a tiny minority–and the majority of bog standard neoclassical economists aren’t even aware of differential equations (they understand differentiation, which is a more limited but foundational mathematical technique). They believe that if a process is in equilibrium over time, it can be modelled, but if it isn’t, it can’t. And even the “high priests” of economics, who should know better, stick with equilibrium modelling at almost all times.

Equilibrium has thus moved from being a technique used when economists knew no better and had no technology to handle out of equilibrium phenomena–back when Jevons, Walras and Marshall were developing what became neoclassical economics in the 19th century, and thought that comparative statics would be a transitional methodology prior to the development of truly dynamic analysis –into an “article of faith”. It is as if it is a denial of all that is good and fair about capitalism to argue that at any time, a market economy could be in disequilibrium without that being the fault of bungling governments or nasty trade unions and the like.

And so to this day, the pinnacle of neoclassical economic reasoning always involves “equilibrium”. Leading neoclassicals develop DSGE (”Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium”) models of the economy. I have no problem–far from it!–with models that are “Dynamic”, “Stochastic”, and “General”. Where I draw the line is “Equilibrium”. If their models were to be truly Dynamic, they should be “Disequilibrium” models–or models in which whether the system is in or out of equilibrium at any point in time is no hindrance to the modelling process.

Instead, with this fixation on equilibrium, they attempt to analyse all economic processes in a hypothetical free market economy as if it is always in equilibrium–and they do likewise to the Great Depression...

At first, Fisher was completely flummoxed: he had no idea why it was happening, and blamed “speculators” for the fall (though not of course for the rise!) of the market, lack of confidence for its continuance, and so on… But experience ultimately proved a good if painful teacher, when he developed “the Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions”.

An essential aspect of this new theory was the abandonment of the concept of equilibrium.

In his paper, he began by saying that:

We may tentatively assume that, ordinarily and within wide limits, all, or almost all, economic variables tend, in a general way, to ward a stable equilibrium. In our classroom expositions of supply and demand curves, we very properly assume that if the price, say, of sugar is above the point at which supply and demand are equal, it tends to fall; and if below, to rise.


However, in the real world:

New disturbances are, humanly speaking, sure to occur, so that, in actual fact, any variable is almost always above or below the ideal equilibrium.

Therefore in theory as well as in reality, disequilibrium must be the rule:

Theoretically there may be—in fact, at most times there must be— over- or under-production, over- or under-consumption, over- or under spending, over- or under-saving, over- or under-investment, and over or under everything else. It is as absurd to assume that, for any long period of time, the variables in the economic organization, or any part of them, will “stay put,” in perfect equilibrium, as to assume that the Atlantic Ocean can ever be without a wave.” (Fisher 1933, p. 339; emphasis added)


He then considered a range of “usual suspects” for crises–the ones often put forward by so-called Marxists such as “over-production”, “under-consumption”, and the like, and that favourite for neoclassicals even today, of blaming “under-confidence” for the slump. Then he delivered his intellectual (and personal) coup de grâce:

I venture the opinion, subject to correction on submission of future evidence, that, in the great booms and depressions, each of the above-named factors has played a subordinate role as compared with two dominant factors, namely over-indebtedness to start with and deflation following soon after; also that where any of the other factors do become conspicuous, they are often merely effects or symptoms of these two. In short, the big bad actors are debt disturbances and price- level disturbances.

While quite ready to change my opinion, I have, at present, a strong conviction that these two economic maladies, the debt disease and the price-level disease (or dollar disease), are, in the great booms and depressions, more important causes than all others put together…

Thus over-investment and over-speculation are often important; but they would have far less serious results were they not conducted with borrowed money. That is, over-indebtedness may lend importance to over-investment or to over-speculation.

The same is true as to over-confidence. I fancy that over-confidence seldom does any great harm except when, as, and if, it beguiles its victims into debt. (Fisher 1933, pp. 340-341. Emphases added.)

From this point on, he elaborated his theory of the Great Depression which had as its essential starting points the propositions that debt was above its equilibrium level and that the rate of inflation was low. Starting from this position of disequilibrium, he described the 9 step chain reaction shown above.

Of course, if the economy had been in equilibrium to begin with, the chain reaction could never have started. By previously fooling himself into believing that the economy was always in equilibrium, he, the most famous American economist of his day, completely failed to see the Great Depression coming.

How about Bernanke today? Well, as Mark Twain once said, history doesn’t repeat, but it sure does rhyme. Just four years ago, as a Governor of the Federal Reserve, Bernanke was an enthusiastic contributor to the “debate” within neoclassical economics that the global economy was experiening “The Great Moderation”, in which the trade cycle was a thing of the past–and he congratulated the Federal Reserve and academic economists in general for this success, which he attributed to better monetary policy:

“In the remainder of my remarks, I will provide some support for the “improved-monetary-policy” explanation for the Great Moderation.”

Good call Ben. We have now moved from “The Great Moderation!” to “The Great Depression?” as the debating topic du jour.

On that front, his analysis of what caused the Great Depression certainly doesn’t imbue confidence. This chapter (first published in 1995 in the neoclassical Journal of Money Credit and Banking [ February 1995, v. 27, iss. 1, pp. 1-28]–the same year my Minskian model of Great Depressions was published in the non-neoclassical Journal of Post Keynesian Economics [Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 607-635]) considers several possible causes:

A neoclassical, laboured re-working of Fisher’s debt-deflation hypothesis, to interpret it as a problem of “agency”–”Intuitively, if a borrower can contribute relatively little to his or her own project and hence must rely primarily on external finance, then the borrower’s incentives to take actions that are not in the lender’s interest may be relatively high; the result is both deadweight losses (for example, inefliciently high risk-taking or low effort) and the necessity of costly information provision and monitoring)” (p. 17);

Aggregate demand shocks from the return to the Gold Standard and its effect on world money supplies; and

Aggregate supply shocks from the failure of nominal wages to fall–”The link between nominal wage adjustment and aggregate supply is straightforward: If nominal wages adjust imperfectly, then falling price levels raise real wages; employers respond by cutting their workforces” (p. 21).

None of these “causes” includes excessive private debt–the phenomenon that I hope now even Ben Bernanke can see was the cause of the Great Depression–and the reason why he and neoclassical economists like him are no longer discussing “The Great Moderation”.