A lot of readers, when we’ve discussed the budget/shutdown/debt ceiling negotiations, have done the equivalent of declaring it all to be kabuki, that the fix is in. While I have no doubt that any resolution of this impasse is certain to make matters worse for what is left of the endangered species known as the … Read more
I recently returned from conference in Brazil jointly sponsored by the Levy Economics Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the Brazilian research group MINDS. It is part of a bigger project to take Hyman P. Minsky global. In my view, Minsky was hands-down the greatest economist of the second half of the twentieth century and he … Read more
As the momentum of economic growth is shifting from the transatlantic axis to Asia, both the United States and China are rebalancing their foreign policies in the region. However, as the recent APEC and ASEAN summits indicate, the way these two great nations are pivoting in Asia is very, very different.Today, the United States is … Read more
Even casual scrutiny will tell you that the current ridiculous levels of CEO pay bear no relationship to anything other than their highly developed rent extraction skills. Bloomberg reported earlier this year that the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay has increased 1000% since 1950. Fortune 500 companies pay their chieftans 204 times the level … Read more
In the next few weeks, Premier Li Keqiang’s “new type of urbanization” is expected to take off. In the West, the response has often been skeptical and occasionally very critical. It is time for a sanity check. Integration, scale and prosperity Some critics argue that Beijing is about to create a “Chinese city of 260 … Read more
There’s still no political agreement to avert a Treasury default and so the possibility, however remote, is inching closer. What are the risks? Well, the floor is wide open for discussion–no one’s really sure where we’re headed because we’re in uncharted waters when it comes to Treasury defaults. Sort of. Donald Marron at the Tax … Read more
Writing in the New York Times, Stephen King, the chief economist of HSBC, quotes Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. “It is in the progressive state, while the society is advancing to the further acquisition, rather than when it has acquired its full complement of riches, that the condition of the labouring poor, of the … Read more
Harvard Economist Niall Ferguson appeared on CNN’s GPS with Fareed Zakaria over the weekend. Ferguson has stood out among mainstream economists lately in his opposition to the US fiscal stimulus package, an $880 billion experiment in expansionary Keynesian policy. While economists like Paul Krugman argue that Obama’s plan is not big enough to fill America’s … Read more
Among economists a wide consensus exists that a transfer of supervisory powers to the ECB needs to be accompanied by increased risk sharing at the euro area level, through the establishment of a European resolution mechanism and a joint deposit guarantee scheme. This line of argument is based on the accountability principle, according to which … Read more
Summer was marked by a strong pressure of capital outflows and exchange rate devaluations in several systemically relevant emerging markets. A global portfolio rebalancing was put in motion on May 22, when talk of the U.S. Federal Reserve shrinking — and eventually reversing — its asset purchase program (QE or quantitative easing) was made public. … Read more