This week marks the tenth anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq. What have the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cost the United States to date? What additional bills will come due in the future? Economists and budget analysts have made many estimates since the early 2000s. Only one regularity has emerged from their work: … Read more
The international monetary system (IMS) is neither preventing currency volatility … On paper, the IMS has to guarantee – with its institutions, policies and conventions – the orderly functioning of transnational financial flows and exchange-rate regimes. Over the past few years, however, most currencies’ exchange-rates fluctuated at an unprecedented pace, hampering capital transfers and commercial … Read more
Introduction The United States has experienced unprecedented increases in energy production recently, and political leaders from both parties have promised that greater energy abundance would bring back manufacturing jobs to the U.S. A study by PwC (2011) claimed that a high-level of shale gas recovery could lead to approximately one million more manufacturing jobs by … Read more
On March 11, 2013 the Los Angeles Times published a revealing article by E. Scott Reckard entitled: “In major policy shift, scores of FDIC settlements go unannounced.” The article’s summary statement captures the theme nicely. “Since the mortgage meltdown, the FDIC has opted to settle cases while helping banks avoid bad press, rather than trumpeting punitive actions as … Read more
Brazil gave up structural microeconomic reforms and is progressively letting the macroeconomic policy deteriorate, thereby jeopardizing economic growth. The Workers’ Party (PT) has governed Brazil for one decade. Such political continuity has not been reproduced in economic policy. During the crisis of 2002, in order to warrant minimal governability conditions, President Lula was forced to … Read more
Watching the Sunday talk shows this week, I learned that the influential journalist Fareed Zakaria has now joined the chorus urging construction of Keystone pipeline. If built, that pipeline would carry bitumen, a form of asphalt that can be used as a substitute for conventional crude oil, from Canadian oil sands to refineries on the … Read more
The difficulty in making sense of the results of the Italian election has produced the common imagery of a clown to capture the comic Grillo, who appears to be the most unlikely politician since Lech Walesa, the unemployed electrician that led Solidarity in Poland, helping to bring the fatal crisis upon the Soviet Union, and … Read more
This Great Graphic was posted by Phil Izzo on Wall Street Journal’s economics blog. Department of Labor data shows that the government (federal, state and local) have cut 750k jobs since the middle of 2009, according to the establishment survey. Izzo notes that the household survey finds that 950k few people are employed by the … Read more
Here’s a flashback to a press release from Warren Mosler’s Senate campaign in 2010. He bet that none of our deficit hysterians in Washington would be able to prove that Uncle Sam can run out of money. The money still sits on the table. Presumably Pete Peterson and his hired hysterians all know that they … Read more
With every passing day Portugal has less and less economy left, while fewer and fewer people remain to try to pay down the debt. As Portuguese President Aníbal Cavaco Silva once put it, “A country without children is a nation without a future.” He was, of course, referring to his country’s ultra-low birth rate, which … Read more