MacroScope

Europe on the brink. United States risks double-dip recession. Financial turmoil threatens world economy. Not the sort of headlines you would associate with a Nobel-prize-winning contribution to the progress of humanity. To their credit, recipients Christopher Sims of Princeton and Thomas Sargent of New York University did develop methods and models that are wisely used by economists around the world, including central banks. But it’s unclear what practical applications their findings have for the world’s current economic predicament.

Alfred Nobel himself was not shy about hiding his disdain for the dismal science, which was not part of the original set of awards given in his name. The Nobel prize in economics came into existence in 1968, when Sweden’s central bank decided to create it in the dynamite tycoon’s honor. As German journalist Karen Ilse Horn writes (Thanks to @RecklessMonkeys for bringing the quote to our attention):

Economics was nothing Alfred Nobel appreciated as such, even though he was himself a pretty successful businessman. Rather to the contrary: ‘I have no training in economics myself and also hate it from the bottom of my heart,’ he wrote.

The question appears worth asking: what exactly was the concrete contribution of Sims and Sargent? That answer, it seems, is a little harder to come by. Take Paul Krugman, who makes a living explaining the intricacies of economics to lay persons. This is what he had to say about the winners:

This is a statistical techniques prize — both men worked on methods for extracting insight from the data history provides us, which generally don’t offer anything like a controlled experiment.

Even if politicians have so far been unable to come to an agreement that will allow the U.S. debt ceiling to be raised by Aug. 2, the popularity of U.S. Treasury auctions this week indicates investors are still keeping the faith. Still, some are starting to get pickier about which Treasuries they would like to hold.

All three government bond auctions this week enjoyed a strong reception. Yet buyers of the 30-year bonds sold on Thursday, for example, might have felt particularly sanguine about the August debt ceiling date because the first coupon payment on those bonds is not due until Nov. 15.

That contrasts with some older Treasury securities that have payments due Aug. 15 or Aug. 31 which have not traded due to “concern that the coupon payment could be missed,” said Justin Lederer, interest-rate strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald.

The programme may strike a different  note -- this year's Davos is apparently all about Shared Norms for the New Reality -- but much of the discussion at the 41st World Economic Forum annual meeting in Davos this month will have a distinctly familiar ring to it.

Last January, the five-day talkfest in the Swiss Alps was dominated by Greece's near-death experience at the hands of the bond market and recriminations over the role of bankers in the financial crisis, as well as worries about China's rapid economic ascent and a lot of calls for a new trade deal.

Fast forward 12 months and not much has changed.

Ireland has joined Greece in the euro zone's intensive care unit and Portugal and  Spain are getting round-the-clock monitoring. The annual round of bankers' bonuses is once again stirring up trouble. China looms larger than ever on the global stage, after overtaking Japan in 2010 to become the world's second-biggest economy. And trade ministers who signally failed to make headway last year say they really must get down to business when they meet on the sidelines of Davos this time round.

A guide at the “Japanese Experience” exhibition talks to Miim, the Karaoke pal robot, on the sidelines of the APEC meetings in Yokohama, Japan on Nov. 10. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao

    Miim is one of the more popular delegates at the APEC meetings in Yokohama Japan. She sings. She dances. She tosses her shoulder length hair. She may not be able to spout an alphabet soup of APEC acronyms like the other Asia-Pacific delegates. But she’s still pretty lively. For a robot.

    This week’s meetings of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum have been earnest and most comprehensive . Foreign and trade ministers issued a 20-page statement about all the things they talked about — a giant free trade zone, protectionism, the Doha round, easing restrictions on businesses, simplifying customs procedures, promoting green industries, cooperating on health and security, you name it. They also have been, and pardon my French here, excruciatingly dull. So far, the meetings and their stupefying statements have been a testimonial to Japan’s skill at stating the ambiguous. Call it the opaque meetings. Journalists from around the Pacific rim have been desperately trying to find news as the 21 APEC leaders gather for their annual pow-wow this weekend.

Markets are getting used to volatile swings in economic data since the financial crisis set in three years ago. But UK GDP figures for Q2 were so eye-poppingly strong they caused confusion on trading floors.   

“Should have gone to Specsavers??” wrote Philip Shaw, chief economist at Investec, referring to British television commercials lampooning myopic citizens who desperately need a new pair of corrective lenses.

“Perhaps critics will suggest that the ONS has got it wrong again, but traders’ initial suggestions, calling into question the accuracy of the newswire reports — and this author’s eyesight — proved to be misplaced,” wrote Shaw.

What do an eight-legged creature in an aquarium in Germany and 74 economists have in common? The consensus view that Spain would claim the World Cup — until the economists, as they so often do, changed their minds.

If World Cup 2010 goes down as one of the most unpredictable and exciting competitions in recent history, bringing underdogs Holland and Spain to the final showdown, what was hopelessly routine was watching so-called expert opinion converge around the safest bet. At least among financial professionals, who have done so well of late predicting the future.

When Reuters first surveyed economists and forecasters in May on which team would be kissing the golden grail on July 11, 2010  in South Africa, it made for interesting reading. Spain would take it — by a narrow margin, it has to be said — followed by Brazil, Argentina and England. Improbable probability analysis, perhaps, but not boring.

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King was on good form when he addressed the Royal Society – Britain’s oldest scientific discussion club – on the vexing issue of communicating complex forecasts to the great unwashed.

Aside from his usual moan about the media’s desire to reduce the BoE’s beautiful but baffling ‘fan charts’ of inflation forecasts to one or two numbers, he made a rare and welcome admission that in past years the central bank had not done as well as it could have to flag up the risk that a financial crisis was about to happen.

The BoE’s financial stability reports – like those from many other central banks – sometimes sounded as if they were crying wolf in the years running up to the credit crunch by warning of pretty much every risk to markets short of Martian invasion.

It suffered the collapse of its currency, economy and banking system so being invoked in a version of the notorious Nigerian email scam is one of the smaller humiliations endured by Iceland.

The confidence trick, which has roots in the 18th century, usually involves an email from someone claiming to be either a deposed African dictator or a Nigerian lawyer, promising a sum of money in return for help to access a substantial fortune.

But the latest spam email making its rounds purports to be from Iceland, one of the highest profile sovereign casualties of the global financial crisis. This version of the email is supposedly from a “devoted christian (sic)” from Iceland”, a widow seeking help to access $6 million in a Canadian bank left to her by her husband who worked for an oil giant for 19 years.

After financial firms slashed hundreds of thousands of jobs in 2007 and 2008, the bloodletting slowed in 2009 as major banks rebounded from the financial crisis. Even though firms like Goldman Sachs Group Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co reported billions of dollars in profit, they still did not announce major hiring initiatives.

Recession layoffs Headcount (end 2008) Headcount (end 2009) Bank of America 45,000 240,202 283,717* Citigroup 75,000 323,000 265,000 Goldman Sachs 4,800 34,500 32,500 J.P. Morgan 23,700 224,961 222,316 Morgan Stanley 8,680 45,295 61,388* UBS 19,700 77,783 65,233 Credit Suisse 7,320 47,800 47,600 Barclays 9,050 152,800 144,200 Deutsche Bank 1,380 80,456 77,053 Santander 2,600 170,961 169,460

* Includes additional employees from Morgan Stanley Smith Barney merger and Bank of America’s merger with Merrill Lynch, both of which were completed in 2009 (Steve Eder and Steve Slater)

When it comes to investing in a turbulent market, is ignorance bliss? According to a new survey by IBM, around half of U.S. investors have never heard of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. This, despite the fact that 67 percent say the global financial crisis has prompted them to pay greater attention to financial news. More than one-third could not identify the current unemployment rate. In case you missed it, the jobless rate eased to 10 percent in November after hitting a 26-1/2-year high of 10.2 percent in October.