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Periodically, a blatantly silly idea gains currency, spreading throughout society, and it has one of two effects: Either it scares the heck out of people, or they become enraptured with its seeming plausibility. Last week, The New York Times published a piece titled, "A Future Without Jobs?" I thought it fell into the silly category. There has been a great deal of speculation lately about dwindling job prospects as automation has replaced many blue-collar jobs and is now threatening white-collar jobs.
We had the land of rising sun then we have Chine then Korea north and south trying to de establish In the old days, before the world was awash in capital with nowhere to go, an announcement of monetary easing was generally considered a good thing, a sign that central bankers were on the job. Historically, in all but the most extreme circumstances, lower interest rates have tended to spur economic activity, with the contemporaneous effect of supporting risky assets. But we are clearly living in an extreme circumstance, and after eight years of such announcements from central banks, it’s time to ask whether monetary policymakers are pushing on a string. The latest example of such: the Bank of Japan’s January 29 decision to apply negative interest rates to a small portion (4 percent) of commercial bank reserves. “The intended signaling was that quantitative easing could still be expanded and that the commitment to raising inflation remains strong,” analysts in Credit Suisse’s Global Markets division wrote in a recent report. “For us, the bigger message is that policymakers are not finding traction in combating lackluster growth and are struggling in the search for effectiveness without any real conviction.” -Then come the finance
