Thanks to the World Congress of the Game Theory Society at Bilgi University, this week Istanbul is hosting four Nobel Prize winners in Economics. Here’s the intro. to my latest Hurriyet Daily News (HDN) column, where I refer to a recent Bank of America Merrill Lynch research report to discuss what game theory has to … Read more
As the Global Financial Crisis rumbles along in its fifth year, we read the latest revelations of bankster fraud, the LIBOR scandal. This follows the muni bond fixing scam detailed a couple of weeks ago, as well as the J.P. Morgan trading fiasco and the Corzine-MF Global collapse and any number of other scandals in … Read more
Imagine a great ship dominating the skyline on a distant sea. Imagine the complexity of that ship: keel, ribs, planks, masts, spars, and an infinite number of less readily named components. Each component was hand-crafted by a craftsman skilled in his trade, to precise requirements, and secured in position to take the stress and strain … Read more
From Project Syndicate: While the risk of a disorderly crisis in the eurozone is well recognized, a more sanguine view of the United States has prevailed. For the last three years, the consensus has been that the US economy was on the verge of a robust and self-sustaining recovery that would restore above-potential growth. That … Read more
Every year I travel to Germany to visit my in-laws, which is where I am now. Given the extra time on my hands, I’ve now mulled over a June 2012 NY Times opinion piece by Gunnar Beck. Beck displays an interesting medley of data in support of his view that Germany cannot afford to backstop … Read more
President Obama is slamming Mitt Romney for heading companies that were “pioneers in outsourcing U.S. jobs,” while Romney is accusing Obama of being “the real outsourcer-in-chief.” These are the dog days of summer and the silly season of presidential campaigns. But can we get real, please? The American economy has moved way beyond outsourcing abroad … Read more
The intra-Eurozone current account deficits have frequently been mentioned as one of the causes of the current malaise in the euro area. Krugman (2012(1)) has stated that the current crisis is “a balance of payments problem, in which capital flooded south after the creation of the euro, leading to overvaluation in southern Europe”. Dadush and … Read more
The latest inflation data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show the CPI unchanged in June, following a 0.3 percent decrease in May. For the full year, the CPI has risen just 1.7 percent, well below the Fed’s target of 2 percent. Since the beginning of June, an important indicator of the risk of Japanese-style … Read more
The global recovery continues, but the recovery is weak; indeed a bit weaker than we forecast in April. In the Euro zone, growth is close to zero, reflecting positive but low growth in the core countries, and negative growth in most periphery countries. In the United States, growth is positive, but too low to make a serious … Read more
