The Saudi/US pact: reflection of a vulnerable America
February 17, 2020The US is made a distant comeback. Its dollar was, at the start of the 1970s, in a precarious situation due to the exorbitant cost of the Vietnam war and the various social programmes whose combined effects meant the country could no longer maintain the parity with gold that was established in 1944 at…
Keynes to the rescue for Lebanon
February 7, 2020When all is said and done, bankruptcy is nothing more than an accounting phenomenon, and growth is a matter of confidence. Otherwise, why would the Bank of Japan be the sole proprietor of half of its national bond market and why are its holdings in bonds and shares in the country reaching 100% of…
Brexit: the irreversible decline of a proud nation
January 31, 2020This 31st January 2020 will be known for a rolling back of freedoms, as Brexit tells above all the story of closure, a victory – not by KO but on points – for the partisans of a Great Britain that is revising its ambitions considerably downwards. Without it, the European Union will still count…
This Japan that won’t stop surprising us
January 24, 2020Japan has been able to face up to its destiny, and even to force it. It has handled perfectly one of the essential components of economic growth, that being demographics. In fact, the number of people on the payroll has increased there these last ten years, much more than in any other developed economy.…
Sanctions are testaments of American supremacy
January 14, 2020Contrary to popular belief, it’s not the weapon of the dollar that makes US sanctions against a country inescapable. The Greenback is of course the reserve currency par excellence on the global scale and naturally accounts for the American hegemony. However, doing business in another currency – for the many companies and nations under…
Germany is drowning in its ordoliberalism
December 31, 2019Do the Germans, who in their overwhelming majority are staunchly opposed to what they call the “Haftungsunion”, also known as transfer union implying that their country pays too much money into Europe, live in a parallel universe? Might the Germans have become populist in that they don’t hesitate to dig up a specious, fallacious, facile…
If only we were all Japanese!
December 12, 2019The economists and bankers of my generation have had the habit of entertaining themselves by dividing the world into four types of economies: developed, emerging, Argentina and Japan. It is worth, however, updating this somewhat simplistic and caricatural joke by removing Japan from the list of economic aberrations. Albeit highly unlikely, the Japanese property…
The Gospel according to Saint Money
November 30, 2019It’s a history condemned to repeat itself forever because, since the dawn of time, the enrichment of some has basically always been to the detriment of others. Inequality has often been described by the upper class as an inevitable side effect, systemic almost, of the prosperity and innovation that is however meant to benefit…
Lebanon: a new race of leaders
November 20, 2019To understand the events in Lebanon that have taken place over the last month, it is vital to have an idea of the country’s debt structure. In other words: the analysis of Lebanon’s public and private debt allows us to better understand this socioeconomic crisis. In fact, Lebanon is renowned for distinguishing itself…
Work is a perished good
November 13, 2019Full time work for a fixed salary has only existed for around a hundred years, and still not for everyone, as women were deprived of it for a good while, including during the happy times of full employment in the second half of last century. Today, deregulation, outsourcing and automation are all synonymous with…