Tema: PPCC-Pisitófilos Creditófagos-Invierno 2022

[Derby]

https://www.theedgemarkets.com/node/650884

World Bank to warn of global recession risk in economic outlook

(Jan 7): The World Bank is concerned that “further adverse shocks” could push the global economy into a recession in 2023, with small states especially vulnerable.

The warning is contained in an abstract for the biannual “Global Economic Prospects” report due for release on Tuesday (Jan 10), and visible on the group’s Open Knowledge Repository website.

Even without another crisis, global growth this year “is expected to decelerate sharply, reflecting synchronous policy tightening aimed at containing very high inflation, worsening financial conditions, and continued disruptions from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine”, the World Bank said.



“Urgent global and national efforts” are needed to mitigate the risk of such a downturn, as well as debt distress in emerging market and developing economies, where investment growth is expected to remain below the average of the past two decades, the Washington-based lender said.

“It is critical that emerging market and developing economy policymakers ensure that any fiscal support is focused on vulnerable groups, that inflation expectations remain well anchored, and that financial systems continue to be resilient,” it said. 

Similar demands have been made by central bankers from around the world, as they aggressively raise interest rates to ease price pressures, while governments support businesses and households by containing energy costs.

International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva started 2023 with a warning that the world faces “a tough year, tougher than the year we leave behind”. One-third of the global economy will be in a recession because the US, the European Union, and China are all slowing down simultaneously, she told CBS’ Face the Nation in an interview aired on Jan 1.

[Benzino Napaloni]

Noticia aparecida en el diario Expansión el 14 de marzo de 2021:

Los fondos tienen un récord de más de 250.000 millones de dólares para invertir en 'start ups'
MAMEN PONCE DE LEÓN

Noticia aparecida en el Expansión de hoy, 7 de enero de 2023:

Los fondos tienen 500.000 millones para 'start up'
MAMEN PONCE DE LEÓN

Saludos.

En qué se los gastarán los pájaros que salen en la foto...

Fichajes a lo grande y despidos en un mes: la sangría de la 'startup' española Jobandtalent

La web de empleo española Jobandtalent deja millones de datos personales al descubierto

Es su modus operandi, quemar una ronda de financiación tras otra. El famoso invierno demográfico y la falta real de personal es lo único que les ha frenado algo.

[puede ser]

La situación de fondo ha cambiado poco. Hay cierta mayor seguridad para el trabajador de que lo van a volver a llamar de una determinada empresa o de una ETT y cierta esperanza de transformación de una vacante indefinida pata negra.

A cambio, lo hemos liado todo. Desde las estadísicas del paro a la labor de la inspección, pasando por una mayor complejidad a la hora de formalizar los contratos y cumplir con el procedimiento de los llamamientos.

Los pobres comen tres veces al día, pero es un lío organizarlo...

[senslev]

Cycles TV: Phillip Anderson on the 18.6-Year Real Estate Cycle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RndBKEvl2LQ

Según este análisis aún faltan 2-3 años para llegar al techo del ciclo en real estate.

https://propertysharemarketeconomics.com/18-point-6-property-share-market-economics/#

Es un poco aburridillo y el autor "habla de su libro", así que igual leyendo el artículo es suficiente.

Get ready for the biggest boom
 

The Covid-19 pandemic has been an extreme emotional event. Governments worldwide have all but thrown the kitchen sink at it.

But keep in mind, this is not unprecedented. It’s reminiscent of 100 years ago from 1919 – 1921. When 50 million people died from the Spanish Flu.
And what happened after that?
The biggest bull market of all time. You’d know it as ‘The Roaring Twenties’.

Keep sight of the bigger picture. Know the cycle and know your history. We are only at the middle point of the current 18.6 year cycle.

Since 1955, the mid cycle pauses that split the 14 years up were quite regular: 1962, 1981, 2001/02 and now, 2020 and into 2021.

Yes, 2020 and parts of 2021 will be recessionary and involve a bear market. And for some it will be a painful time.

But should history repeat, markets are likely to recover strongly.

[sudden and sharp]

Bon dia...









 

[sudden and sharp]

GameStop insiders have purchased 401,923 shares and sold 3,914 shares in the last 12 months. That's a 103:1 Buy/Sell ratio. Here's how that would look in a pie chart.







La consecuencia... ¿lógica?... Más de un 50% de caída. (Que no está tan mal si lo comparas con la media.  )

[sudden and sharp]

[ Tengan (mucho) cuidado ahí fuera...  ]

[wanderer]

https://twitter.com/pmddomingos/status/1611547648523403264

@pmddomingos
The ever-decreasing returns of scientific research.

Ya había yo citado un estudio sobre esta misma cuestión en el hilo STEM:

https://www.transicionestructural.net/index.php?topic=2550.msg208905#msg208905

En todo caso, como matemático que soy, he de decir que pese al espectacular florecimiento que mi ciencia experimentó durante el S,XX, y que aún perdura, incluso en Matemáticas se nota cierto agotamiento en lo que a producción de resultados difíciles y profundos se refiere (p.ej, de la lista de problemas del milenio, sólo se ha resuelto uno de ellos [la Conjetura de Poincaré, y de hecho, en una versión mucho más fuerte, la Conjetura de Geometrización, que clasifica completamente las 3-variedades]).

De lo que son las otras ciencias y de sus aplicaciones tecnológicas (por cierto, que las Matemáticas de alto nivel cada vez están más implicadas tanto en la innovación tecnológica como en las tecnologías de uso más cotidiano), pues ya sabemos lo que hay: desarrollo e implementación espectaculares, sí; innovaciones disruptivas, rotundo no.

[Derby]

https://news.bitcoin.com/former-fed-chair-alan-greenspan-crypto-is-too-dependent-on-greater-fool-theory-to-be-a-desirable-investment/

Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan: Crypto Is Too Dependent on 'Greater Fool Theory' to Be a Desirable Investment

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan says crypto is “too dependent on the ‘greater fool theory’ to be a desirable investment.” However, he noted that the collapse of crypto exchange FTX was “purely fraud,” rather than the result of a feature inherent to crypto. He does not expect the FTX contagion to spread far beyond the crypto space.

Alan Greenspan on Crypto, FTX, and US Economy

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan shared his views on cryptocurrency, the collapsed crypto exchange FTX, and the U.S. economy in a year-end Q&A published by Advisors Capital Management this week.

Greenspan served five terms as chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System from 1987 to 2006. He was appointed chairman by four different U.S. presidents. He joined Advisors Capital Management in September 2016 as Economic Advisor to the asset management firm.

The former Fed chair was asked to comment on the FTX meltdown and whether he expects contagion from it. “I do not expect the fallout from FTX to spread beyond the cryptocurrency/NFT [non-fungible token] space,” Greenspan replied, citing “the information that has come to light so far.” He stressed:

The collapse of FTX was not a result of lax risk management, inadequate accounting procedures, or some feature inherent to crypto — it was purely fraud.

“Fortunately, although FTX and firms like it have increased marketing of their products in recent years, the lack of any noticeable widespread market reaction to FTX suggests that they are still fairly concentrated in the hands of a relatively small subset of investors,” Greenspan described.

“Moreover, the differences we observed in the aftermaths of the popping of the tech bubble and the popping of the housing bubble showed clearly that credit-fueled asset bubbles create far more contagion when they ultimately deflate,” he opined. “There does not appear to be a significant amount of leverage dedicated to the cryptocurrency/NFT space at this time, so I do not expect contagion to spread very far beyond this particular asset class.”

The former Federal Reserve chief added:

With respect to the wider crypto universe, I view the asset class as too dependent on the ‘greater fool theory’ to be a desirable investment

Greenspan also shared his view on the U.S. economy and the Federal Reserve’s fight against inflation. Commenting on whether a recession is required to bring down inflation as some economists have suggested, he said:

A recession does appear to be the most likely outcome at this time.

However, he does not believe “a Fed reversal that is substantial enough to avoid at least a mild recession” is warranted. “Wage increases, and by extension employment, still need to soften further for a pullback in inflation to be anything more than transitory. So, we may have a brief period of calm on the inflation front but I think it will be too little too late,” Greenspan concluded.

[Derby]

https://goldseek.com/article/year-pause

Year of the Pause John Mauldin

(...) The Fed and other policymakers look mainly at Core CPI and PCE, which strip out food and energy prices. This leaves housing as the largest component. The way they measure rent is tricky because, in most cases, it changes only when leases come up for renewal. This gets worked into the indexes gradually, so the rates on new leases can be quite different. As we all now notice, they have been falling recently.

Economist Jason Furman tracks a modified Core CPI that substitutes “spot” rental rates for official calculations. This is a better way to think about where inflation (at least the way we measure it) is going. The improvement is quite evident in his chart.



What that tells us is that housing costs are going to be a significant disinflationary force in 2023. It doesn’t mean inflation is disappearing; housing is a big living cost, but not the only one. It simply suggests the worst fears likely won’t materialize.

I think data like this is what let the FOMC dial back the hiking pace to only 50 points in December, and if it continues, probably less in the next few meetings.

That brings us to my one specific forecast: I have been saying for over a year that I believe the Fed funds rate will get to 5%. I now believe it is entirely possible the Fed will not stop hiking until it gets to 5.5%. The operative word there is believe.

Minneapolis Fed president Neel Kashkari this week called for the Fed funds rate to be between 5.25% and 5.5%. When Kashkari, one of the most dovish FOMC members, is signaling almost 5.5%, Powell clearly has buy-in to go “higher for longer.”

That number isn’t random, by the way. Powell has said they want to see positive real rates across the whole yield curve. Inflation backing off to 3% or 4% while Fed funds is 5.5% would do it, even if long-term rates stay in a small inversion. It would be, if not exactly a “normalized” policy, much closer to normal than we’ve seen since 2008.

But this is also where we start seeing other problems. The economy—and certainly financial markets—no longer wants this kind of normalcy. It has adapted to free liquidity. Adapting back won’t be easy, and it certainly won’t be painless.(...)

[Derby]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7e6c967c-8dd0-11ed-a321-77184a1c82e4

Emotions are getting in the way of property deals

(...) Buyers shouldn’t be afraid to haggle, walk away and wait, but they need to remain realistic (and be prepared to lose the purchase), because even though good deals can be done even in a recession, few people can afford to give away their property.

If you are reluctant to barter (like me) and can afford it, employ a buying agent to do the research and negotiate on your behalf.

For most home-movers — and let’s face it: few are sitting on a pile of cash from selling at the peak — the falling market will mean taking a hit on the house they are selling and balancing that with the price offered on their onward purchase.

Over the long term for most buyers, though, a house is a home and losses can be recouped over time. Last week Halifax revealed that average house prices are up 974 per cent since 1983 — rising from £26,188 (£81,665 adjusted for inflation) to £281,272 — despite several recessions.

[Derby]

https://www.qldpropertyinvestor.com.au/australias-property-prices-in-2023/

Australia’s property prices in 2023: Why some are predicting a ‘September dip'

(...)Dr Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP Capital, is now forecasting prices to fall up to 20 per cent with the bottom of the market occurring in the September quarter.

“Australian home prices are likely to fall further as rate hikes continue to impact, resulting in a top to bottom fall of 15-20 per cent, but with prices expected to bottom around the September quarter, ahead of gains late in the year as the RBA moves toward rate cuts,” Oliver forecasts.

“Unlisted commercial property and infrastructure are expected to see slower returns, reflecting the lagged impact of weaker share markets and higher bond yields (on valuations).”

[pollo]

https://twitter.com/pmddomingos/status/1611547648523403264

@pmddomingos
The ever-decreasing returns of scientific research.

Ya había yo citado un estudio sobre esta misma cuestión en el hilo STEM:

https://www.transicionestructural.net/index.php?topic=2550.msg208905#msg208905

En todo caso, como matemático que soy, he de decir que pese al espectacular florecimiento que mi ciencia experimentó durante el S,XX, y que aún perdura, incluso en Matemáticas se nota cierto agotamiento en lo que a producción de resultados difíciles y profundos se refiere (p.ej, de la lista de problemas del milenio, sólo se ha resuelto uno de ellos [la Conjetura de Poincaré, y de hecho, en una versión mucho más fuerte, la Conjetura de Geometrización, que clasifica completamente las 3-variedades]).

De lo que son las otras ciencias y de sus aplicaciones tecnológicas (por cierto, que las Matemáticas de alto nivel cada vez están más implicadas tanto en la innovación tecnológica como en las tecnologías de uso más cotidiano), pues ya sabemos lo que hay: desarrollo e implementación espectaculares, sí; innovaciones disruptivas, rotundo no.

Hablando de matemáticas, pienso que los humanos como civilización tenemos un sesgo tremendo con el ratio de descubrimientos y/o avances por unidad de tiempo.

Si analizamos las modas "futuristas" de cada época, vemos que cuando han ocurrido avances fundamentales, ha posibilitado que se descubran o inventen nuevas cosas a una velocidad relativamente alta durante un período de tiempo relativamente corto (pongamos unos 15 años), y disparaba la confianza en que esa velocidad iba a continuar.

Como 15 años en escala humana es un período de tiempo largo, la percepción no alcanzaba para ver que un campo tecnocientífico normalmente es acotado, y que llega un momento en el que llegan los retornos decrecientes porque lo fundamental ya se ha abarcado y sólo quedan los detalles por refinar.

Probablemente la cantidad de descubrimientos en un campo nuevo sigue una curva logística, pero nuestra percepción limitada y falta de paciencia y reflexión a más largo plazo nos hace creer que la derivada siempre se va a mantener en los niveles de la primera parte de la curva (exponencial aparente, pero falsa).

En un momento dado, se podría modelar la "velocidad" de descubrimientos e invenciones como una suma de curvas logísticas (cada una de un campo o especialidad), que comienzan en momentos pseudoaleatorios de la Historia. Los descubrimientos probablemente sean aleatorios pero influidos por descubrimientos pasados: los descubrimientos revolucionarios "desbloquean" nuevas ramas del árbol de posibles campos del conocimiento, mientras que los evolutivos sólo mejoran u optimizan cosas ya existentes.

Cuando llega una época en la que se acumulan muchas partes de "meseta" de estas funciones logísticas, y hacen que la velocidad general de descubrimientos sea baja, aparece la percepción de que se ha llegado al punto en el que "ya se sabe todo" y aparece el pesismismo.

Sería interesante (aunque seguramente inviable) poder establecer esa curva a lo largo de la Historia. Métricas como la cantidad de "papers" y/o patentes me parecen absurdas ya que no hay forma objetiva de evaluar la transcendencia de un descubrimiento y tienen una cantidad enorme de ruido.

Personalmente soy de la opinión de que si bien el conocimiento es enorme, no es infinito, y una vez que se descubre lo fundamental, cada vez cuesta más realizar descubrimientos relevantes.

Esto creo que también sería aplicable a la economía y a las burbujas y probablemente el origen psicológico sea el mismo.

[pollo]

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7e6c967c-8dd0-11ed-a321-77184a1c82e4

Emotions are getting in the way of property deals

(...) Buyers shouldn’t be afraid to haggle, walk away and wait, but they need to remain realistic (and be prepared to lose the purchase), because even though good deals can be done even in a recession, few people can afford to give away their property.

If you are reluctant to barter (like me) and can afford it, employ a buying agent to do the research and negotiate on your behalf.

For most home-movers — and let’s face it: few are sitting on a pile of cash from selling at the peak — the falling market will mean taking a hit on the house they are selling and balancing that with the price offered on their onward purchase.

Over the long term for most buyers, though, a house is a home and losses can be recouped over time. Last week Halifax revealed that average house prices are up 974 per cent since 1983 — rising from £26,188 (£81,665 adjusted for inflation) to £281,272 — despite several recessions.

Cada vez estoy más convencido de que la demografía es el factor que más explica todo este disparate. Ahora que se está revirtiendo, va a haber gente a la que le va a explotar la cabeza al enterarse de que el dogma ya no funciona.

No sé si algún economista ha hablado ya del tema y se han hecho estudios acerca de la correlación entre población y precio de la vivienda.

[Derby]

https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/home-ownership-offshore-corporations-facts-causes-and-consequences

Home ownership by offshore corporations: Facts, causes, and consequences

An extensive literature documents the important role of offshore tax havens in strategies to conceal asset ownership and evade taxes. This column uses a range of data sources to reveal that corporations in offshore tax havens own residential properties in England and Wales worth around £50 billion - around five times more than the combined holdings of corporations registered in foreign non-haven countries. The authors also find that two policy reforms led to sharp behavioural responses consistent with the notion that both taxation and secrecy are important motives for offshore ownership.

An extensive literature documents the important role of offshore tax havens in strategies to conceal asset ownership and evade taxes. Recent evidence suggests that firms book around 7% of their global profits in tax havens, resulting in significant revenue losses (Zucman and Wier 2022). Other evidence suggests that wealthy individuals hold a significant share of their financial assets in tax haven banks, leading to high overall evasion rates at the top of the wealth distribution (e.g. Zucman 2013, Alstadsæter et al. 2018, Alstadsæter et al. 2019, Londoño-Vélez and Ávila-Mahecha 2021).

Concerns about the adverse effects of tax havens among policymakers and more broadly have spurred a wave of policy initiatives. On the firm side, more than 100 countries have agreed on a fundamental reform of the international tax principles and a global minimum tax on firm profits is projected to come into effect in 2023 (Vaitilingam 2021, Johannesen 2022). On the individual side, a large number of countries – including all major tax havens – now exchange bank information automatically, reducing the scope for offshore tax evasion by shining light on previously secret financial accounts (Ramirez et al. 2020, Menkhoff and Mieth 2019, Johannesen et al. 2023).

In a recent paper, we provide new evidence on real estate ownership through offshore companies in the United Kingdom (Johannesen et al. 2022). Anecdotal evidence suggests that top-end real estate in large cities is often held through opaque offshore structures. For instance, an investigative news story documents that 59 apartments out of 76 in an exclusive residential development on one of London's most fashionable addresses belong to corporations in offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and the Isle of Man. Such ownership structures can serve to evade taxes but may also have socially undesirable effects on urban development. By making property investments more attractive for global elites, they could push prices up and crowd middle-class dwellers out of city centres.

The first part of our paper draws on a range of data sources to provide rich descriptive evidence. We show that corporations in offshore tax havens - most commonly registered in the British Virgin Islands, Jersey, and Guernsey - own residential properties in England and Wales worth around £50 billion. This is around five times more than the combined holdings of corporations registered in foreign non-haven countries, such as the US, Japan, and France.

We find stark differences in the importance of offshore ownership across market segments, as shown in Figure 1. The market share of offshore tax havens stands at around 1.25% in the overall residential market but reaches 15% in the most expensive market segments. Relatedly, there is barely any offshore ownership in rural areas and smaller towns, but a high market share in affluent parts of large cities like Manchester, Leeds, and most notably London.

Figure 1



The data allow us to track offshore ownership over a period of 25 years and we are thus able to describe the long-run development in the market share of offshore tax havens. As shown in Figure 2, the evidence suggests that offshore ownership was negligible around the year 2000 and grew explosively in the period 2005-2015.

Figure 2



Who is behind these investments? Exploiting data leaks such as the Panama Papers and Pandora Papers, we identify the beneficial owners for a set of properties in the UK held through corporations in offshore tax havens. We find that around half of the properties have ties to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and much fewer to North America and neighbouring European countries. Residents of the UK itself control around 15% of the properties, suggesting an important role for round-tripping, i.e. domestic investors buying domestic assets through offshore intermediaries.

Overall, these results suggest stark differences in the role of offshore corporations when comparing residential property markets and financial markets. First, offshore ownership is generally less pervasive in property markets than in financial markets except at the top of the property price distribution. Second, the offshore boom is a much more recent phenomenon in property markets than in financial markets. Third, money invested in residential real estate markets through offshore structures is much more likely to originate in developing countries than financial investments through offshore accounts. Figure 3 shows the last point by comparing the beneficial ownership patterns we identify for UK real estate to the ownership patterns in a major leak of account information from HSBC Switzerland (the ‘Swiss Leaks’).

Figure 3



What are the reasons for these investments? Exploiting different sources of policy variation, we shed light on the causal determinants of offshore ownership, in particular the role of taxation and secrecy for the ultimate owners. We exploit two policy reforms for identification: first, a policy that tightened the capital gains taxation of foreign corporations with property in the UK, but temporarily created a loophole for corporations registered in Luxembourg; and second, a government announcement mandating one group of tax havens (e.g. Bermuda) to fight financial secrecy by setting up public corporate registers with information about beneficial ownership while excluding another group of tax havens from the scope of the policy (e.g. Jersey). Consistent with the notion that both taxation and secrecy are important motives for offshore ownership, we find that both policy events caused sharp behavioural responses with nominal ownership migrating to offshore jurisdictions with low taxation and low transparency.

Do these investments matter? To test if there are real effects of offshore ownership in property markets, we study the surprising ‘Leave’ outcome of the Brexit referendum in 2016. This natural experiment triggered a sharp increase in property sales by offshore owners. In a model that uses repeat sales for identification and allows price dynamics to vary flexibly across price segments, we show that areas in London with a high share of offshore ownership before the Brexit referendum experienced much larger price decreases after the referendum than areas with less offshore ownership, as illustrated in Figure 4. The result is robust to controls such as the share of foreign residents and the share of total corporate ownership in the local area. The implied economic effects are relatively large with a differential decrease in property prices of around 1.5% at the 75th percentile of offshore ownership shares and around 7.5% at the 95th percentile.

Figure 4



Our study adds to a wave of recent work investigating cross-border ownership of real estate and the implications for tax compliance and financial transparency (e.g. Alstadsæter et al. 2022, Bomare and Le Guern Herry 2022, Collin et al. 2022).