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 books: 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. Learn from Japan which experienced the same predicament afflicting the West fifteen years earlier Discover how unwinding of quantitative easing will affect the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, as well as the emerging world Examine solutions to the Eurozone problems caused by two balance sheet recessions eight years apart Gain insight into China's problems from the West's own experiences with urbanisation 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.

The revised edition of this highly acclaimed work presents crucial lessons from Japan's recession that could aid the US and other economies as they struggle to recover from the current financial crisis. This book is about Japan's 15-year long recession and how it affected current theoretical thinking about its causes and cures. It has a detailed explanation on what happened to Japan, but the discoveries made are so far-reaching that a large portion of economics literature will have to be modified to accommodate another half to the macroeconomic spectrum of possibilities that conventional theorists have overlooked. The author developed the idea of yin and yang business cycles where the conventional world of profit maximization is the yang and the world of balance sheet recession, where companies are minimizing debt, is the yin. Once so divided, many varied theories developed in macro economics since the 1930s can be nicely categorized into a single comprehensive theory- The Holy Grail of Macro Economics

Get a new perspective from the ‘other half’ of macroeconomics The failure of the vast majority of economists in government, academia and the private sector to predict either the post-2008 Great Recession or the degree of its severity has raised serious credibility issues for the profession. The repeated failures of central banks and other policymakers in all advanced countries to meet their inflation or growth targets in spite of astronomical monetary easing, have left the public rightfully suspicious of the establishment and its economists. The Other Half of Macroeconomics and the Fate of Globalization elucidates what was missing in economics all along and what changes are needed to make the profession relevant to the economic challenges of today. Once the other half of macroeconomics is understood both as a post-bubble phenomenon and as a phase of post-industrial economies, it should be possible for policy makers to devise appropriate measures to overcome difficulties advanced countries are facing today such as stagnation and income inequality. • Shows how it’s possible to devise appropriate policy response to slow wage and productivity growth in these economies • Demonstrates that the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policy changes as an economy undergoes different stages of development • Argues that tax rules, regulations and even educational system must be revised to match the need of pursued (by emerging nations) countries • Explains the 200-year process of economic development and where that process is taking all of us Inside, Richard C. Koo offers a completely new way of looking at the economic predicament of advanced countries today.

This book offers a thorough and perspicacious analysis of quantitative easing, which has become a recovery method of last resort. While it was successful in stimulating growth, this strategy remains controversial and continues to promote widespread debate in economics, financial, and political economy circless.

A rare insider’s account of the inner workings of the Japanese economy, and the Bank of Japan’s monetary policy, by a career central banker The Japanese economy, once the envy of the world for its dynamism and growth, lost its shine after a financial bubble burst in early 1990s and slumped further during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008. It suffered even more damage in 2011, when a severe earthquake set off the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. However, the Bank of Japan soldiered on to combat low inflation, low growth, and low interest rates, and in many ways it served as a laboratory for actions taken by central banks in other parts of the world. Masaaki Shirakawa, who led the bank as governor from 2008 to 2013, provides a rare insider’s account of the workings of Japanese economic and monetary policy during this period and how it challenged mainstream economic thinking.

As the debates about the recent global recession and the subsequent recovery have clearly shown, our understanding of these questions has been very limited. This comprehensive text puts the latest global recession and ongoing recovery in perspective. With the support of a companion website and DVD, we have created several multimedia tools to help understand the basics.

The days of rapid economic growth in China are over. Mounting debt and rising internal distortions mean that rebalancing is inevitable. Beijing has no choice but to take significant steps to restructure its economy. The only question is how to proceed. Michael Pettis debunks the lingering bullish expectations for China's economic rise and details Beijing's options. The urgent task of shifting toward greater domestic consumption will come with political costs, but Beijing must increase household income and reduce its reliance on investment to avoid a fall.

The financial crisis is destroying wealth but is also a remarkable opportunity to uncover the ways by which debt can be used to regulate the economic system. This book uses four case studies of cooperatives to give an in-depth analysis on how they have braved the crisis and continued to generate wealth.

The experience of the Great Recession and its aftermath revealed that a lower bound on interest rates can be a serious obstacle for fighting recessions. However, the zero lower bound is not a law of nature; it is a policy choice. The central message of this paper is that with readily available tools a central bank can enable deep negative rates whenever needed—thus maintaining the power of monetary policy in the future to end recessions within a short time. This paper demonstrates that a subset of these tools can have a big effect in enabling deep negative rates with administratively small actions on the part of the central bank. To that end, we (i) survey approaches to enable deep negative rates discussed in the literature and present new approaches; (ii) establish how a subset of these approaches allows enabling negative rates while remaining at a minimum distance from the current paper currency policy and minimizing the political costs; (iii) discuss why standard transmission mechanisms from interest rates to aggregate demand are likely to remain unchanged in deep negative rate territory; and (iv) present communication tools that central banks can use both now and in the event to facilitate broader political acceptance of negative interest rate policy at the onset of the next serious recession.

Why our addiction to debt caused the global financial crisis and is the root of our financial woes Adair Turner became chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority just as the global financial crisis struck in 2008, and he played a leading role in redesigning global financial regulation. In this eye-opening book, he sets the record straight about what really caused the crisis. It didn’t happen because banks are too big to fail—our addiction to private debt is to blame. Between Debt and the Devil challenges the belief that we need credit growth to fuel economic growth, and that rising debt is okay as long as inflation remains low. In fact, most credit is not needed for economic growth—but it drives real estate booms and busts and leads to financial crisis and depression. Turner explains why public policy needs to manage the growth and allocation of credit creation, and why debt needs to be taxed as a form of economic pollution. Banks need far more capital, real estate lending must be restricted, and we need to tackle inequality and mitigate the relentless rise of real estate prices. Turner also debunks the big myth about fiat money—the erroneous notion that printing money will lead to harmful inflation. To escape the mess created by past policy errors, we sometimes need to monetize government debt and finance fiscal deficits with central-bank money. Between Debt and the Devil shows why we need to reject the assumptions that private credit is essential to growth and fiat money is inevitably dangerous. Each has its advantages, and each creates risks that public policy must consciously balance.