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Andrew Smithers responds to Lance Taylor’s rebuttal.

“Good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure.”

A debate between Lance Taylor and Andrew Smithers on the alleged “global savings glut.” Smithers responds to Taylor’s INET working paper, to which Taylor then offers a rebuttal. A second round of the debate is now included as well.

Financial commentator Andrew Smithers responds to Lance Taylor’s INET working paper. You may also read Taylor’s response to Smithers’s comment here.

Lance Taylor responds to Andrew Smithers’s comment on his INET working paper, “Germany and China Have Savings Gluts, the USA Is a Sump: So What?”

Consolidation in the dairy industry has created separate, inflexible supply chains for consumers and commercial markets. When COVID killed commercial demand, perfectly good milk and cheese was wasted.

The rise of the Knowledge Based Economy and subsequent Data Driven Economy has created a new world in which the basis of wealth and power is derived from control of these intangible assets, alongside creating a new kind of social and political space in which both our public and private spheres are technologically reshaped. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated these transformations that permeate our world and has amplified their effects.

Consolidation in the dairy industry has created separate, inflexible supply chains for consumers and commercial markets. When COVID killed commercial demand, perfectly good milk and cheese was wasted.

A lot has changed since our taxes and benefits were designed, and the consequences of delaying reform are rising.

Global carbon emissions could fall by an estimated 5.5% in 2020 as a result of declining industrial production in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. But if the change is not systemic these effects may be fleeting, and the changing climate could put hundreds of millions of lives, trillions of dollars of economic activity, and the world’s physical and natural capital at risk.

A “global saving glut” was invented by Ben Bernanke in 2005 as a label for positive net lending (imports exceeding exports) to the American economy by the rest of the world. However, there is a more plausible explanation for the persistent trade imbalance between the US and its major trading partners.

An alternative look at the “global savings glut”

While policymakers around the world are in fire-fighting mode, trying to keep the economies in their charge running and the mysterious pandemic under control, the global terrain beneath our feet is shifting. Which countries will emerge as winners and losers in the new global landscape?

Despite post-2008 regulations, the boom-bust credit cycle continues to run wild

Despite post-2008 regulations, the boom-bust credit cycle continues to run wild