Gennaro Zezza — The Next Bubble?

Is the U.S. economy heading towards another bubble? Since last week, the number of commentators on this subject has been growing, from Robert Shiller to Nouriel Roubini (on housing markets)...

Summing up, our findings suggest that U.S. non-financial corporations are in a healthy state – as measured by their net profits – but that this will not necessarily imply stronger U.S. growth and job creation. On the contrary, the data are coherent with a further increase in the concentration of income leading to financial speculation, in the U.S. as well as in foreign financial markets.

Restoring jobs and prosperity in the U.S. does not seem to be what U.S. corporations are working towards, and yes, the soaring stock market may change course very quickly, if “financial markets” make this decision.

Restoring sustainable growth in the U.S. (and elsewhere) requires a reversal of the trend in income distribution, since, as Stockhammer reminds us, “rising inequality has increased the propensity to speculate as richer households tend to hold riskier financial assets than other groups,” and “higher inequality has led to higher household debt as working class families have tried to keep up with social consumption norms despite stagnating or falling real wages” – a fact we already investigated a few years ago.

Multiplier Effect

The Next Bubble?
Gennaro Zezza | Associate Professor in Economics at the Department of Economics of the University of Cassino, Italy, and a Research Scholar at the Levy Institute of Economics

Reuters — Robert Shiller, Nobel Winning Economist, Warns Of U.S. Stock Market Bubble

"I am not yet sounding the alarm. But in many countries stock exchanges are at a high level and prices have risen sharply in some property markets," Shiller told Sunday's Der Spiegel magazine. "That could end badly," he said.

The Huffington Post
Robert Shiller, Nobel Winning Economist, Warns Of U.S. Stock Market Bubble
Reuters

Michael Pettis — When are markets “rational”?

Last month’s award of the Nobel Price in economics set off a great deal of chortling because one of the three recipients, Eugene Fama, received the award for saying that markets are efficient at capital allocation and another, Robert Schiller, received the award for saying they are not....

To me, much of the argument about whether or not markets are efficient misses the point. There are conditions, it seems, under which markets seem to do a great job of managing risk, keeping the cost of capital reasonable, and allocating capital to its most productive use, and there are times when clearly this does not happen. The interesting question, in that case, becomes what are the conditions under which the former seems to occur.

Michael Pettis jumps into the fray.

China Financial Markets
When are markets “rational”?
Michael Pettis

Robert Shiller--The best, brightest and least productive?

So much of our national "brain power" is siphoned off into finance where nothing of value is produced and rent seeking on already exsisting assets extracts a high cost on the rest of society. Yale Professor Robert Shiller sums it up pretty well.

To some people, the question is a moral one. Trading against others is regarded as an inherently selfish pursuit, even if it might have indirect societal benefits. But, as economists like to point out, traders and speculators provide a useful service. They sort through information about businesses and (at least some of the time) try to judge their real worth. They are thus helping to allocate society’s resources to the best uses – that is, to the most promising businesses.

But these people’s activities also impose costs on the rest of us. Indeed, a 2011 paper by Patrick Bolton, Tano Santos, and José Scheinkman argues that a significant amount of speculation and deal-making is pure rent-seeking. In other words, it is wasteful activity that achieves nothing more than enabling the collection of rents on items that might otherwise be free.

We hear people defend these predator rent-seekng finance capitalists all the time. Just turn on Fox News or listen to resident CNBC idiot Joe Kernan gush about "producers" and why they should be taxed less and regulated less. It's bullshit.

Shiller hits the nail on the head. Read the full article here.