Michael Roberts — Boom or bust?

Review and critique of the latest OECD World Economic Outlook, from a Marxian POV. Useful.

The key for me, as readers of this blog know, is what is happening to the profitability of capital in the major economies. If profitability is rising, then corporate investment and economic growth will follow – but also vice versa. But if profitability and profits are falling, debt accumulated will become a major burden. Eventually the zombies will start to go bankrupt, spreading across sectors and a slump will ensue. Financial prices will quickly collapse toward the real value of their underlying productive assets.
Indeed, according to Goldman Sachs economists, the prices of financial assets (bonds and stocks) are currently at their highest against actual earnings since 1900!
What the OECD and IMF reports show is that if there is a downturn in profitability, the next slump will be severe, given that private debt (both corporate and household) has not been ‘deleveraged’ in the last nine years – indeed on the contrary.…

Michael Roberts Blog
Boom or bust?
Michael Roberts

David Nicklaus — China's worry about 'Minsky moment' may be a good sign

Randy Wray gets a mention.

St. Louts Post-Dispatch
Nicklaus: China's worry about 'Minsky moment' may be a good sign

David Nicklaus, business columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

Reuters — China's central bank Anticipates a "Minsky moment."

Hyman Minsky goes to China.

China will fend off risks from excessive optimism that could lead to a "Minsky Moment", central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan said on Thursday, adding that corporate debt levels are relatively high and household debt is rising too quickly.

A Minsky Moment is a sudden collapse of asset prices after a long period of growth, sparked by debt or currency pressures. The theory is named after economist Hyman Minsky....

"If there are too many pro-cyclical factors in the economy, cyclical fluctuations are magnified and there is excessive optimism during the period, accumulating contradictions that could lead to the so-called Minsky Moment," Zhou was speaking on the sidelines of China's 19th Communist Party congress.

"We should focus on preventing a dramatic adjustment," he said. China will control risks from sudden adjustments to asset bubbles and will seriously deal with disguised debt of local government financing vehicles, Zhou said....

CNBC

China's central bank just warned of a sudden collapse in asset prices

Reuters

Oleg Komlik — China’s Minsky moment: stability leads to instability

Hyman Minsky (1919–1996) was a distinguished American scholar and prominent post-Keynesian economist. In the wake of the 2008-2009 crisis Minsky’s invaluable scientific contribution has widely spread, but soon he has unfortunately disappeared from public and economic discussions. 

While most of the mainstream economists are of the view that economic busts are the outcome of various external shocks, Minsky held that the capitalist system itself generates shocks through its own internal dynamics and financial capitalism is inherently unstable. A key mechanism that pushes an economy towards an inevitable crisis is the rampant speculation and the accumulation of debt by the private sector (investors, banks, companies). Minsky claimed that in prosperous times, when corporate cash flow rises beyond what is needed to pay off debt, actors take on more risk and a speculative euphoria develops. Soon thereafter debts exceed what borrowers can pay off from their incoming revenues (especially during the period of monetary tightening) which in turn produces a financial crisis. This slow movement of the financial system from stability to fragility followed by sudden major collapse is famously known as “Minsky moment”.…

Economic Sociology and Political Economy
China’s Minsky moment: stability leads to instability
Oleg Komlik | founder and editor-in-chief of the ES/PE, Chairman of the Junior Sociologists Network at the International Sociological Association, a PhD Candidate in Economic Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University, and a Lecturer in the School of Behavioral Sciences at the College of Management Academic Studies