During the debate over the Obama administration’s health care policy, Republicans came up with the catchy phrase “repeal and replace.” I’ll get back to health care in another post, but for now, I’d like to filch the phrase for the increasingly lively debate over the federal ethanol mandate, or Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS), as it … Read more
In one of our previous posts we argued that the relative loss of competitiveness globally by southern European countries since the introduction of the euro has not been as dramatic as sometimes portrayed, is comparable to that experienced by some of the largest developed trading nations, and does not appear to be caused by “übercompetitiveness” … Read more
Last week was the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of the global financial crisis. Not uncoincidentally it was also the fifth anniversary of continually rising unemployment in Spain, since it was in early summer 2007 that seasonally adjusted Spanish unemployment embarked on its steady upward path. And after it started climbing, naturally it hasn’t stopped … Read more
Market nervousness about Italy has been growing in recent weeks, with the Moody’s credit downgrade of the country being only one of the reasons. A bailout is clearly in the offing, with the only real questions being how and when. While the situation inside his country appears to be deteriorating, Mario Monti has been doing … Read more
Summary: The most accurate source of global temperature data comes from satellites, with their full coverage and more standard sensors. Thanks to the internet we need not rely on secondary sources; we can see the data for ourselves. For analysis, of course, we must rely on scientists. Previous posts have discussed the 2 century long … Read more
Something different for today: world trade. Recently, South Korea and Taiwan released July 2012 trade statistics, where annual export growth was seen contracting at a 8.8% and 11.6% rate, respectively. The annual pace of export growth in Taiwan contracted for the fifth consecutive month, where that in South Korea turned negative following a 1.1% annual … Read more
“Pursuant to the statutory powers vested in him by the People of the State of New York . . . [and] extensive investigation included the review of more than 30,000 pages of documents, including internal SCB [Standard Chartered Bank] e-mails that describe willful and egregious violations of law. For almost ten years, SCB schemed with … Read more
From time to time, there are suggestions that the future seigniorage income of a central bank is an asset that is available for current lending. Buiter (2008) argues that the discounted present value of future seigniorage should be included as an asset on the balance sheet of the central bank, implying a large capacity to … Read more
Lack of enforcement of rules that had been agreed to is clearly an important cause of the current mess in the Eurozone. Violations of the Stability and Growth Pact by Germany and France have been frequently mentioned as a tipping point after which other EZ states stopped behaving in a fiscally responsible way. Frankel has … Read more
Think today about two countries, both in Europe but not in the euro. They should, in theory, be facing very similar circumstances. But one country, having performed strongly since the worst of the global financial crisis, surprised the markets a few days ago with a 1.4% jump in gross domestic product in the second quarter. … Read more