Your opportunity to be a “micro-entrepreneur”: By cleaning other people’s homes or renting out your spare room. Thomas Friedman, and others, have recently extolled the virtues of the sharing economy (see “Welcome to the Sharing Economy,” or “How to Monetize Your Closet“). At the risk of bragging, my immigrant parents were clearly trendsetters in this … Read more
OK for the next few weeks we are going to play a game called Bop a Mole. Here’s the deal. For more than two decades a small group of scholars hashed out what became Modern Money Theory. We’ve written many books, a hundred chapters for edited volumes, hundreds of published articles, and thousands of blogs … Read more
Yesterday Fareed Zakaria presented an interview with British Chancellor of the ExchequerGeorge Osborne on his CNN talk show GPS. (CNN did not post the video, but you can read the transcript here.) In the course of the interview, Zakaria brought up Larry Summers’ recent criticism of Britain’s austerity policy. The resulting exchange immediately set off … Read more
One of the most extraordinary stories of the past decade largely overlooked by the U.S. media is how Central and Latin America have quietly escaped U.S. control since 9-11, as Washington focused on its global War on Terror (WoT). The WoT diverted Washington’s attention long enough that progressive governments established themselves throughout the southern Western … Read more
There have been key figures throughout history that have been extremely influential in a country’s destiny. Nelson Mandela is one such figure. This article suggests that South Africa must learn to look forward or otherwise it risks falling in a trap where certain nations have fallen, a trap of difficult exit. A handful of visionary … Read more
Our little Internet debate about reverse convertibles (my contribution here) prompted this post by Mike at Rortybomb. To simplify a little, some commentators defended reverse convertibles by saying, “it’s basically the same as writing a put option” – or, looking at it from the other side of the trade, “there are valid reasons to want … Read more
The headlines for the latest report on U.S. economic growth mostly focused on the revised 4.1 percent growth rate for real GDP. As the following chart shows, that made it the best quarter in two years, and only the second quarter since the recovery began in which growth hit the 4 percent mark or better. … Read more
One of the main reasons for the Fed’s (near) zero rate policy is to support the housing market. And after nearly 5 years of 0 rates, and mortgage rates dipping below 3.5%, though ‘off the bottom’ housing remains far below what would be considered ‘normal’. And then, not long ago, and immediately after the Fed first … Read more
This article explains what Portugal and Spain can learn from the Basque. The Basque Country is one of Spain’s 17 Autonomous Communities in the current territorial arrangement negotiated in Spain in the aftermath of Francisco Franco Bahamonde’s death on 20 November 1975. Franco was the fascist Dictator who ruled Spain between 1939 and 1975. The … Read more
In mid 2010 the Turkish central bank decided to introduce a policy that increased uncertainty in interest rates hoping that would stop foreign investors who were pouring money into the country in search of a quick buck. That’s right. ‘Keep calm and carry on’ was replaced by ‘Keep them guessing.’ The Turkish economy was overheating. Money poured into … Read more