Most Anglo-Saxon economists join politicians in the ClubMed countries in their view that the German obsession with principles (e.g. balanced budgets, the no-bail-out clause or the prohibition of monetizing public debt) is bad for the Eurozone. Kantian “Ordnungspolitik” may be fine for the long run (or may have been fine in the long gone past […]
Banks will continue to go bust from time to time just as banks will continue periodically to get themselves into trouble that stops short of collapse. They are, after all, run by human beings. All the regulation and micromanagement in the world will not eliminate the human tendency to over-excitement in a boom and the […]
With prospective rates of return on OECD assets at pitifully low levels, investment managers should rationally look further afield. Five years ago the BRICS were assumed to be the solution. But their only unifying features turned out to be that they were overpriced, heavily geared on OECD prosperity, and vulnerable to the whims of their […]
As lightning struck Athens on Monday and the new Syriza-led government came to power, Greek banks began one of their most turbulent weeks in recent years. Shares in the Greek financial sector fell by almost 44% from Monday to Wednesday before climbing by 13% on Thursday. If a week is a long time in politics, […]
This week, the World Health Organization (WHO) meets in Geneva to discuss its agenda for the year ahead. In addition to pressing topics such as Ebola, officials will discus the Sustainable Development Goals – the replacement for the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, due to expire this year. There is increasing consensus that developing countries should […]
The most jaw-dropping aspect of the foreign exchange scandal, for which some of the world’s largest banks were ordered yesterday to pay enormous fines, is that the miscreant traders continued their activities after their jobs had been saved by the taxpayer. Put to one side the wisdom or otherwise of the bank bailouts themselves. Here were traders […]
Politicians are often at their most revealing when they respond to an unexpected question. At a public meeting in Cheshire the other day, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron was asked about interest rates by a woman who was anxious about her mortgage. “It would be lovely to say can we have low interest rates forever,” […]
Why do poor people stay poor? In theory, we know how to go from misery to prosperity, thanks to a right combination of capital and work. We also know that this combination works best when handled by private entrepreneurs, watched over by a legitimate state. When, after the collapse of the Soviet pseudo-model, the whole […]
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