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The Escape from Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap: A Hazardous Road for the World Economy
Compare global experiences during the balance sheet recession and find out what is needed for a full recovery The Escape from Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap details the many hidden dangers remaining as the world slowly recovers from the balance sheet recession of 2008. Author and leading economist Richard Koo explains the unique political and economic pitfalls that stand in the way of recovery from this rare type of recession that was largely overlooked by economists. Koo anticipated the current predicament in the West long before others and issued warnings in his previous Balance Sheet Recession and The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics . This new book illustrates how history is repeating itself in Europe while the United States, which learnt from the Japanese experience, is doing better by avoiding the fiscal cliff. However, because of the liberal dosage of quantitative easing already implemented, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan may face a treacherous path to normalcy in what Koo calls the QE Trap. He argues that it is necessary to understand balance sheet recession in order to resolve the Eurozone crisis, particularly the competitiveness problems. Koo issues warnings against those who are too ready to argue for structural reforms when the problems are actually with balance sheets. He re-examines Japan's two decades of experiences with this rare recession and offers an insider view on the Abenomics. On China, readers will gain a very different historical perspective as Koo argues that western commentators have forgotten their own history when they talk about the re-balancing of the Chinese economy. Koo, who developed the concept of balance sheet recession based on Japan's experience, took the revolution in macroeconomics started by John Maynard Keynes in 1936 to a new height. The Escape from Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap offers the world cure for balance sheet recession.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
40 people are currently reading
411 people want to read
About the author
Richard C. Koo
18 books45 followersRichard Koo (born 1954) is Taiwanese American economist. He is chief economist at the Nomura Research Institute in Japan.
He studied at the University of California, Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University, where he got his PhD.
He studied at the University of California, Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University, where he got his PhD.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
November 11, 2016
The update of Richard Koo’s classic “The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics” is a better book than the original.
It is less verbose, more to the point, has more evidence to support the main thesis, it applies the theory to the European Union particularly well and comes with a bonus chapter on China.
It is however not as significant a contribution, and here’s why:
The original appeared in 2008, just as things were unravelling in the West and predicted with uncanny accuracy exactly how wrong things could go if the wrong policies were adopted. Drawing on the author’s reading of the Japanese experience from 1990 to 2007, it explained for the first time anywhere a very unorthodox, but 100% correct, theory on when monetary policy works and when it amounts to what Keynes described as “pushing on a string.” The ten line summary of the theory has two parts: first that there are two types of recessions (i) the ones caused by the five to ten year inventory cycle and (ii) the ones caused by the thirty to fifty year leverage cycle previously described by Irving Fischer and Hyman Minsky. Second, the author postulated that if a recession is caused by the overbuilding of inventory and capacity for which there was no corresponding demand, then low interest rates will be seized by healthy borrowers to pick up the pieces and re-start the economy. If however it is overleveraging and a subsequent collapse in asset prices that lies behind the recession, then the private sector will be more concerned with rebuilding its balance sheet than with profit maximization, cheaper money will prove to be of no use to anybody and the only way to set the economy right is with fiscal stimulus, funded by the government issuing the necessary bonds to absorb savings that would otherwise not be put to productive use.
Richard Koo was for the longest time the only person anywhere making this point, and very sadly this book could very easily had been entitled “I TOLD YOU SO.”
That’s obviously a shame, because I was really hoping that after having made the biggest contribution to macroeconomics in a good seventy years (and I’m definitely not exaggerating here) the author would have tried to address the instances where his theory did not work 100% to plan. So, for example, the US seems actually to have “reinflated the bubble” by getting every American to accept a car loan again. As I’m writing this, subprime car loans are all the rage and have pushed US car sales past all previous records. I’d have loved to hear what Richard Koo thinks about that. Similarly, asset prices are setting new records, even though entire continents remain deep in what he calls “balance sheet recession.” Please, Dr. Koo, tell us what you think, we beg you.
So where the “Holy Grail” fully explained the past and did an unbelievable job of explaining / predicting the future, the “Escape from the Balance Sheet Recession and the QE trap” kind of pretends that the bits where the predictions turned out to be 75% accurate actually hit the bullseye.
Some great new ideas / observations are introduced, of course:
• The author explains why we’re now stuck with QE and demonstrates a series of problems we will face on the way out
• In particular he explains why the current plan to first raise rates and then sell the accumulated bonds is flawed (a low anchor for rates would be very useful when we’re selling, if we ever do)
• He explains that excess private savings in peripheral Europe actually get recycled into German government bonds rather than in their domestic markets, preventing peripheral European governments from engaging in the necessary fiscal stimulus
• …while conversely private savings in core Europe, no longer hemmed in by currency risk, chased higher yields in peripheral Europe, fuelling housing bubbles and government-spending bubbles
• Based on the two last observations, he proposes that private savings in both core Europe and peripheral Europe should be prevented from investing in non-domestic government bonds, or at the very least penalised (e.g. via risk weightings) when they do
• He explains that Eurobonds would address the procyclical and destabilising effects described above, but would not solve the political problem of how much debt to issue and how to allocate the proceeds among Eurozone members
• The concept of the “Lewis turning point” is discussed with reference to China, this being the point where the labor that could easily be diverted toward urbanization and industrialization is as good as exhausted
In summary, if you have managed to get to year 2015 without having read “The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics,” then by all means read the new book instead. It’s better. But this is nowhere nearly as big a contribution to economic thinking as the original.
It is less verbose, more to the point, has more evidence to support the main thesis, it applies the theory to the European Union particularly well and comes with a bonus chapter on China.
It is however not as significant a contribution, and here’s why:
The original appeared in 2008, just as things were unravelling in the West and predicted with uncanny accuracy exactly how wrong things could go if the wrong policies were adopted. Drawing on the author’s reading of the Japanese experience from 1990 to 2007, it explained for the first time anywhere a very unorthodox, but 100% correct, theory on when monetary policy works and when it amounts to what Keynes described as “pushing on a string.” The ten line summary of the theory has two parts: first that there are two types of recessions (i) the ones caused by the five to ten year inventory cycle and (ii) the ones caused by the thirty to fifty year leverage cycle previously described by Irving Fischer and Hyman Minsky. Second, the author postulated that if a recession is caused by the overbuilding of inventory and capacity for which there was no corresponding demand, then low interest rates will be seized by healthy borrowers to pick up the pieces and re-start the economy. If however it is overleveraging and a subsequent collapse in asset prices that lies behind the recession, then the private sector will be more concerned with rebuilding its balance sheet than with profit maximization, cheaper money will prove to be of no use to anybody and the only way to set the economy right is with fiscal stimulus, funded by the government issuing the necessary bonds to absorb savings that would otherwise not be put to productive use.
Richard Koo was for the longest time the only person anywhere making this point, and very sadly this book could very easily had been entitled “I TOLD YOU SO.”
That’s obviously a shame, because I was really hoping that after having made the biggest contribution to macroeconomics in a good seventy years (and I’m definitely not exaggerating here) the author would have tried to address the instances where his theory did not work 100% to plan. So, for example, the US seems actually to have “reinflated the bubble” by getting every American to accept a car loan again. As I’m writing this, subprime car loans are all the rage and have pushed US car sales past all previous records. I’d have loved to hear what Richard Koo thinks about that. Similarly, asset prices are setting new records, even though entire continents remain deep in what he calls “balance sheet recession.” Please, Dr. Koo, tell us what you think, we beg you.
So where the “Holy Grail” fully explained the past and did an unbelievable job of explaining / predicting the future, the “Escape from the Balance Sheet Recession and the QE trap” kind of pretends that the bits where the predictions turned out to be 75% accurate actually hit the bullseye.
Some great new ideas / observations are introduced, of course:
• The author explains why we’re now stuck with QE and demonstrates a series of problems we will face on the way out
• In particular he explains why the current plan to first raise rates and then sell the accumulated bonds is flawed (a low anchor for rates would be very useful when we’re selling, if we ever do)
• He explains that excess private savings in peripheral Europe actually get recycled into German government bonds rather than in their domestic markets, preventing peripheral European governments from engaging in the necessary fiscal stimulus
• …while conversely private savings in core Europe, no longer hemmed in by currency risk, chased higher yields in peripheral Europe, fuelling housing bubbles and government-spending bubbles
• Based on the two last observations, he proposes that private savings in both core Europe and peripheral Europe should be prevented from investing in non-domestic government bonds, or at the very least penalised (e.g. via risk weightings) when they do
• He explains that Eurobonds would address the procyclical and destabilising effects described above, but would not solve the political problem of how much debt to issue and how to allocate the proceeds among Eurozone members
• The concept of the “Lewis turning point” is discussed with reference to China, this being the point where the labor that could easily be diverted toward urbanization and industrialization is as good as exhausted
In summary, if you have managed to get to year 2015 without having read “The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics,” then by all means read the new book instead. It’s better. But this is nowhere nearly as big a contribution to economic thinking as the original.
December 28, 2022
Starts rough, improves progressively, ends spectacularly.
In the first quarter of the book, at times, it feels like the author spends more time listing a set of cases where he can claim "I told you so" rather than explaining his theory on Balance Sheet Recessions. Only in the second quarter does he really explain what he means by Balance Sheet Recessions and how they differ from other Recessions. In the second and third quarters is where he proposes concrete remedies. I'd argue that his remedies are often unproven, or proven ineffective in the long run. I say ineffective in that they seem to simply have shifted the problem elsewhere, creating a whack-a-mole situation. In each cases, he conveniently doesn't discuss the cause of the new problem or blames shortcomings on the implementation instead of the theory.
As you enter the second half of the book, he then applies his analysis to 4 economies and their recent (10-20 years) history: the US, Japan, the EU, and finally China. Those analyses go from very good to exceptional, in order. In all cases, they are enlightening. This is despite the book getting written in 2014, and focusing on the post 2008 crisis. In the case of the EU and China, the analyses are exceptionally interesting and even prescient of where we are at the end of 2022. This book, written roughly 8 years ago, is still a terrific read to better understand both the 2008 crisis, Balance Sheet Recessions, and the world we are in now.
Great read.
In the first quarter of the book, at times, it feels like the author spends more time listing a set of cases where he can claim "I told you so" rather than explaining his theory on Balance Sheet Recessions. Only in the second quarter does he really explain what he means by Balance Sheet Recessions and how they differ from other Recessions. In the second and third quarters is where he proposes concrete remedies. I'd argue that his remedies are often unproven, or proven ineffective in the long run. I say ineffective in that they seem to simply have shifted the problem elsewhere, creating a whack-a-mole situation. In each cases, he conveniently doesn't discuss the cause of the new problem or blames shortcomings on the implementation instead of the theory.
As you enter the second half of the book, he then applies his analysis to 4 economies and their recent (10-20 years) history: the US, Japan, the EU, and finally China. Those analyses go from very good to exceptional, in order. In all cases, they are enlightening. This is despite the book getting written in 2014, and focusing on the post 2008 crisis. In the case of the EU and China, the analyses are exceptionally interesting and even prescient of where we are at the end of 2022. This book, written roughly 8 years ago, is still a terrific read to better understand both the 2008 crisis, Balance Sheet Recessions, and the world we are in now.
Great read.
December 27, 2018
Balance sheet recessions - but of course. Such a treat to pick up a book and finish it knowing that you learned something significant. Spot on with so many points.
January 18, 2015
“Balance sheet recession” is a relatively new term outlining the factors involved in the aftermath of financial crashes which decimate the value of property and stock portfolios - such as the 1929 crash, the Japanese crash of 1990, and the 2007/8 global financial crash (GFC).
It was coined in 2010 by Japan-based Richard C Koo, the author of The Escape from Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap and chief economist for the Nomura Research Institute.
The book is important because it explores Japan’s response from the 1990 bursting of its economic bubble through to the successful rebooting of its economy via a process that only finally reconciled the books in 2010. For 20 years the country’s policymakers were somewhat flying in the dark, an excuse which the class of today, facing a not-dissimilar set of circumstances, doesn’t have.
Japan’s crisis began when the markets crashed in 1990, wiping 1,500 trillion Yen (60 per cent of its previous value) in wealth destroyed by falling land and share prices. The write-down was the largest economic peacetime loss ever, equal to three years’ GDP. Even the 1929 Wall Street Crash was equivalent to only one years’ GDP for the US.
But what happened within the Japanese economy – not fully explored or explained as yet to my knowledge – was hugely instructive. “Japanese firms rushed to repair balance sheets by paying down debt.” The fundamentals of Japanese firms – making new stuff and selling it – were still healthy. They weren’t doing anything wrong when the markets - starting with the property sector - self-annilihated. “The resulting plunge in domestic asset prices opened a large hole in corporate balance sheets. Many companies saw their net worth plunge into negative territory.”
But in that situation – a classic balance sheet recession - the industrial and manufacturing sector had healthy cash flows which it could use to pay down debt as quickly as possible. The key point is that during a balance sheet recession the healthy option for firms is not the maximisation of profit for the shareholder but the minimisation of debt. Not something the markets might want to hear but tough, y’know? “The correct and preferable course of action from the perspective of all corporate stakeholders, therefore, is to pay down debt with cash flow. As long as cash flow remains healthy, time will solve the issue of technical insolvency.”
What happens next is the key part of the recovery from this ordeal. Japan’s government initiated an annual dose of fiscal stimulus which was directed towards repairing and building infrastructure such as roads and bridges. It should be noted – and it is, during the masterful sixth and final chapter, China’s Economic Challenges – that China went even further with this policy when it suffered an equivalent balance sheet recession during the fallout from the GFC. After 2009 China built ghost stadia and ghost towns as part of its emergency stimulus. “They were public works projects designed to preserve the 60 million jobs that would have been lost as a result of the GFC, which originated in the West,” Koo explains.
Anyway, by identifying and implementing the correct policy of fiscal stimulus rather than, say, propping up share prices by investing in the bond market via QE – anyone called Mr Osborne listening? – the Japanese economy maintained GDP at pre-bubble peak levels every year over the next 20-odd years “despite the fact that commercial land prices plunged 87 per cent and back to the levels of 1973”.
Koo kicks off at the delay in accepting his formulation. “It took so long to understand and overcome this recession because no university teaches that technically insolvent companies will choose to minimise debt instead of maximise profit.”
Not just universities – the quality of writing in the media was, Koo suggests, woeful - possibly destructive and certainly corrosive. Journalists “combed Japan for examples of wasteful public works projects and cited them as evidence that the government had wasted taxpayer money”. These have-a-go heroes of the Press were “bashing the stimulus based on the totally unfounded assumption that Japan would have been able to maintain zero growth without any help from the government”.
Japan hasn’t been the only example of a state implementing strategies Koo identifies as appropriate. The US initiated a fiscal programme which pulled it out of post-GFC recession faster than expected – and more efficiently than those places which dithered, or embarked on a programme of austerity.
Which brings us to the eurozone. Koo’s insights really are worth getting to grips with. Never was the fug of current debate on this topic more thoroughly cleared than in the penultimate chapter, Euro Crisis – Facts and Resolution. This topic is why I picked up the book, because it I thought it might answer the question of why the Eurozone hasn’t – at the time of writing - adopted quantitative easing.
It’s hard to think of any good reason why the euro should survive when you read Koo’s gimlet-eyed assessment of how it has piled self-inflicted woe upon self-inflicted woe.
Having said that, a unique combination of circumstances meant that in 2009, just when a policy of fiscal stimulus was needed post-GFC, the full facts of Greece’s fiscal profligacy were revealed. In previous circumstances Greece would have devalued the drachma but of course this was no longer an option. The tragedy was that the countries (Ireland, Spain and Portugal) that were in balance sheet recession – the opposite of the state that Greece was in – “were forced to respond in the same way as Greece, tipping them into deflationary spirals”.
This catastrophic policy error occurred for two reasons. “The Maastricht Treaty that underlies the Euro is a defective document that makes no allowance for countries in balance sheet recessions” is the first. The second point is that nation states within the eurozone are still able to sell their own government bonds. “The plurality of government bond markets within the same currency zone means that the self-corrective mechanism for balance sheet recessions functions poorly, if at all, in the eurozone.”
The deficit-reduction policy imposed on the eurozone because Greece “had been hiding the extent of its fiscal deficits” before joining the euro in 2002 has proved a disaster unimpeded by policy makers and analysts. Indeed the Toronto Summit in 2010 saw austerity gain momentum “when the G20 agreed to reduce their fiscal deficits in half, and again in 2011 as eurozone countries adopted a new ‘fiscal compact’ at Germany’s urging”.
So, to Germany. Koo states that it implemented its own structural reforms after the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, seriously shaking its economic stability which had invested big in the IT sector. As a result of this experience Germany’s policy makers decided that structural reform requires a crisis ie that implementing reforms during a crisis is in fact the optimal state of affairs and furthermore signs of additional strain are, in the Bundesbank’s view, signs that even greater reforms are required.
Thus the tableau is set for a crisis that now threatens not just the economic well-being of the eurozone, but its democratic future too. Germany misread a balance sheet recession as a sign of underlying structural problems and imposed fiscal consolidation – “the one policy that governments must not use during a balance sheet recession”. The result has been mayhem, bringing all involved to the brink of oblivion.
The eurozone crisis would never have happened if Greece had been kicked out when the true scale of its deficits – ably masked by investment bankers – became apparent. And if the policy of fiscal consolidation continues there will be a crisis in democracy – as was apparent in last year’s EU elections.
The two defects in the euro – if they were fixed – would save the currency which Koo calls “one of humanity’s greatest achievements”. One is to adjust the Maastricht Treaty to take account of balance sheet recessions. The second is to address “the plurality of government bond markets within the same currency zone”. Just these two finishing touches and the euro would be functional again – no need for quantitative easing. The “trap” part of the title, by the way, refers to the fact that once you embark on a QE strategy, you can’t wind it down without the risk of generating “tremendous inflation” – so you have to keep on doing it with ever more gusto.
Forget Thomas Piketty. Richard Koo has written one of most important books of its type, outlining a new mechanism which can’t become part of the canon of economic theory quickly enough.
It was coined in 2010 by Japan-based Richard C Koo, the author of The Escape from Balance Sheet Recession and the QE Trap and chief economist for the Nomura Research Institute.
The book is important because it explores Japan’s response from the 1990 bursting of its economic bubble through to the successful rebooting of its economy via a process that only finally reconciled the books in 2010. For 20 years the country’s policymakers were somewhat flying in the dark, an excuse which the class of today, facing a not-dissimilar set of circumstances, doesn’t have.
Japan’s crisis began when the markets crashed in 1990, wiping 1,500 trillion Yen (60 per cent of its previous value) in wealth destroyed by falling land and share prices. The write-down was the largest economic peacetime loss ever, equal to three years’ GDP. Even the 1929 Wall Street Crash was equivalent to only one years’ GDP for the US.
But what happened within the Japanese economy – not fully explored or explained as yet to my knowledge – was hugely instructive. “Japanese firms rushed to repair balance sheets by paying down debt.” The fundamentals of Japanese firms – making new stuff and selling it – were still healthy. They weren’t doing anything wrong when the markets - starting with the property sector - self-annilihated. “The resulting plunge in domestic asset prices opened a large hole in corporate balance sheets. Many companies saw their net worth plunge into negative territory.”
But in that situation – a classic balance sheet recession - the industrial and manufacturing sector had healthy cash flows which it could use to pay down debt as quickly as possible. The key point is that during a balance sheet recession the healthy option for firms is not the maximisation of profit for the shareholder but the minimisation of debt. Not something the markets might want to hear but tough, y’know? “The correct and preferable course of action from the perspective of all corporate stakeholders, therefore, is to pay down debt with cash flow. As long as cash flow remains healthy, time will solve the issue of technical insolvency.”
What happens next is the key part of the recovery from this ordeal. Japan’s government initiated an annual dose of fiscal stimulus which was directed towards repairing and building infrastructure such as roads and bridges. It should be noted – and it is, during the masterful sixth and final chapter, China’s Economic Challenges – that China went even further with this policy when it suffered an equivalent balance sheet recession during the fallout from the GFC. After 2009 China built ghost stadia and ghost towns as part of its emergency stimulus. “They were public works projects designed to preserve the 60 million jobs that would have been lost as a result of the GFC, which originated in the West,” Koo explains.
Anyway, by identifying and implementing the correct policy of fiscal stimulus rather than, say, propping up share prices by investing in the bond market via QE – anyone called Mr Osborne listening? – the Japanese economy maintained GDP at pre-bubble peak levels every year over the next 20-odd years “despite the fact that commercial land prices plunged 87 per cent and back to the levels of 1973”.
Koo kicks off at the delay in accepting his formulation. “It took so long to understand and overcome this recession because no university teaches that technically insolvent companies will choose to minimise debt instead of maximise profit.”
Not just universities – the quality of writing in the media was, Koo suggests, woeful - possibly destructive and certainly corrosive. Journalists “combed Japan for examples of wasteful public works projects and cited them as evidence that the government had wasted taxpayer money”. These have-a-go heroes of the Press were “bashing the stimulus based on the totally unfounded assumption that Japan would have been able to maintain zero growth without any help from the government”.
Japan hasn’t been the only example of a state implementing strategies Koo identifies as appropriate. The US initiated a fiscal programme which pulled it out of post-GFC recession faster than expected – and more efficiently than those places which dithered, or embarked on a programme of austerity.
Which brings us to the eurozone. Koo’s insights really are worth getting to grips with. Never was the fug of current debate on this topic more thoroughly cleared than in the penultimate chapter, Euro Crisis – Facts and Resolution. This topic is why I picked up the book, because it I thought it might answer the question of why the Eurozone hasn’t – at the time of writing - adopted quantitative easing.
It’s hard to think of any good reason why the euro should survive when you read Koo’s gimlet-eyed assessment of how it has piled self-inflicted woe upon self-inflicted woe.
Having said that, a unique combination of circumstances meant that in 2009, just when a policy of fiscal stimulus was needed post-GFC, the full facts of Greece’s fiscal profligacy were revealed. In previous circumstances Greece would have devalued the drachma but of course this was no longer an option. The tragedy was that the countries (Ireland, Spain and Portugal) that were in balance sheet recession – the opposite of the state that Greece was in – “were forced to respond in the same way as Greece, tipping them into deflationary spirals”.
This catastrophic policy error occurred for two reasons. “The Maastricht Treaty that underlies the Euro is a defective document that makes no allowance for countries in balance sheet recessions” is the first. The second point is that nation states within the eurozone are still able to sell their own government bonds. “The plurality of government bond markets within the same currency zone means that the self-corrective mechanism for balance sheet recessions functions poorly, if at all, in the eurozone.”
The deficit-reduction policy imposed on the eurozone because Greece “had been hiding the extent of its fiscal deficits” before joining the euro in 2002 has proved a disaster unimpeded by policy makers and analysts. Indeed the Toronto Summit in 2010 saw austerity gain momentum “when the G20 agreed to reduce their fiscal deficits in half, and again in 2011 as eurozone countries adopted a new ‘fiscal compact’ at Germany’s urging”.
So, to Germany. Koo states that it implemented its own structural reforms after the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, seriously shaking its economic stability which had invested big in the IT sector. As a result of this experience Germany’s policy makers decided that structural reform requires a crisis ie that implementing reforms during a crisis is in fact the optimal state of affairs and furthermore signs of additional strain are, in the Bundesbank’s view, signs that even greater reforms are required.
Thus the tableau is set for a crisis that now threatens not just the economic well-being of the eurozone, but its democratic future too. Germany misread a balance sheet recession as a sign of underlying structural problems and imposed fiscal consolidation – “the one policy that governments must not use during a balance sheet recession”. The result has been mayhem, bringing all involved to the brink of oblivion.
The eurozone crisis would never have happened if Greece had been kicked out when the true scale of its deficits – ably masked by investment bankers – became apparent. And if the policy of fiscal consolidation continues there will be a crisis in democracy – as was apparent in last year’s EU elections.
The two defects in the euro – if they were fixed – would save the currency which Koo calls “one of humanity’s greatest achievements”. One is to adjust the Maastricht Treaty to take account of balance sheet recessions. The second is to address “the plurality of government bond markets within the same currency zone”. Just these two finishing touches and the euro would be functional again – no need for quantitative easing. The “trap” part of the title, by the way, refers to the fact that once you embark on a QE strategy, you can’t wind it down without the risk of generating “tremendous inflation” – so you have to keep on doing it with ever more gusto.
Forget Thomas Piketty. Richard Koo has written one of most important books of its type, outlining a new mechanism which can’t become part of the canon of economic theory quickly enough.
March 16, 2021
Trong khi những người khác đã đi làm và kiếm được rất nhiều tiền thì họ vẫn đang ngồi trên ghế nhà trường để học lại. Chính vì lý do đó, không tội gì mà bạn không sử dụng dịch vụ mua bằng cao đẳng giá rẻ cả, nó sẽ giúp bạn tiết kiệm thời gian, chi phí và đem lại hiệu quả cao.
Các nhà tuyển dụng sẽ phỏng vấn để đánh giá khả năng chuyên môn và kinh nghiệm làm việc của bạn, do vậy họ sẽ không quá chú trọng để ý săm soi kỹ vào tấm bằng của bạn, chỉ cần bạn thể hiện thật tốt, bạn sẽ nắm được công việc có mức lương hấp dẫn.
https://baoxinviec.com/mua-bang-cao-d...
Các nhà tuyển dụng sẽ phỏng vấn để đánh giá khả năng chuyên môn và kinh nghiệm làm việc của bạn, do vậy họ sẽ không quá chú trọng để ý săm soi kỹ vào tấm bằng của bạn, chỉ cần bạn thể hiện thật tốt, bạn sẽ nắm được công việc có mức lương hấp dẫn.
https://baoxinviec.com/mua-bang-cao-d...
April 26, 2020
Interesting idea and theory on balance sheet recession! The author used the theory to understand what happened to Japanese economies and Eurozone crisis, and he provides a consistent and a new perspective to explain those events. The only drawback is that some of the texts are repetitive and verbose, and the book can be more concise.
September 2, 2017
Only slightly less repetitive than The Holy Grail. It gets to you a bit but it helps drive home his message: balance sheet recessions need fiscal stimulus by the government.
The more interesting part was what to do with QE and how we might avoid the QE trap.
The more interesting part was what to do with QE and how we might avoid the QE trap.
February 11, 2016
Koo's discussion of "balance sheet recessions" is an essential read for all interested in understanding the dynamics of the modern economy in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Balance sheet recessions occur rarely, but their impact is severe and long-lasting, impacting the overall economy through multiple channels: deflationary pressures, contracting credit, and private incentives to save (motivated by clear economic and psychological rationales). The book lucidly explains balance sheet recessions, fiscal and monetary policy responses, and makes a compelling argument that balance sheet recessions represent a unique economic challenge, are of significant importance to economics and public policy, and remain outside of the scope of mainstream understanding in the worlds of economics and public policy.
While a background in economics and an understanding of banking sector dynamics is valuable, it is not essential to capture Koo's main arguments. The book is a rich and valuable text that deserves a place on the bookshelves of financial professionals, economists, and policy-makers.
While a background in economics and an understanding of banking sector dynamics is valuable, it is not essential to capture Koo's main arguments. The book is a rich and valuable text that deserves a place on the bookshelves of financial professionals, economists, and policy-makers.
February 6, 2015
Good introduction to the theory of balance sheet recessions but could probably do better with more data. Content was also repetitive and it certainly seemed like the book was put together at short notice. Nevertheless, still a must-read book for an alternative mental frame for understanding rich world Economics post-2008
March 30, 2017
A bit repetitive as I have previously read the Holy Grail, but the chapters on the Eurozone and China were a great read, they offered a novel approach of analysing both economies.
The Eurozone chapter is a great complement to Martin Wolfe's The Shifts and the Shocks.
I also liked Koo's take on Piketty's work.
The Eurozone chapter is a great complement to Martin Wolfe's The Shifts and the Shocks.
I also liked Koo's take on Piketty's work.
April 13, 2016
Read what Central Bankers around the world have read: this book. Unfortunately, the fiscal side hasn't read it yet.
Koo has clarity of thought. Reading him helped me see foresee the GFC's negative impact on the US consumer and make the right changes in my investments to make it through.
Koo has clarity of thought. Reading him helped me see foresee the GFC's negative impact on the US consumer and make the right changes in my investments to make it through.
February 19, 2015
Brilliant
October 20, 2015
Strong analysis but desperately in need of an editor. Too repetitive, too many digressions, too much name dropping and "I-told-you-so"-ism. Could easily have been half as long.
November 19, 2016
Interesting perspective about GFC and its aftermath.
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