The economic deficiencies of our political leaders
September 17, 2019The “Japanisation” of our Western economies that I have been talking about and describing for years has now reached its climax with the world’s two most influential central banks – the ECB and the Fed – getting (back) out the heavy artillery in the hope of putting more pressure on their interest rates. The heated…
The People against the Economists
September 9, 2019In his time, Franklin Delano Roosevelt dismissed John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential and brilliant economists of the 20th century, who was labelled an “unorthodox mathematician” by this president. In his farewell address, Eisenhower had warned his citizens against the technocrats in power, the same who were recently described by Emmanuel Macron…
Compliance, Banks in a changing world
September 3, 2019The rise to power of compliance departments in banks can be explained by the fines imposed by regulators and Western, mainly American, judiciaries. After the 9/11 attacks, after the “Patriot Act”, and after the US sanctions on Iran, Russia, certain Mexican agents and anyone who the US unilaterally and in an instant decries as…
Italy: how to decimate a country in less than 20 years
July 26, 2019In 1960, Italy’s GDP was 15% smaller than France’s, and 27% lower than the average of Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France’s combined. However, this country enjoyed steady growth until the start of the 1990s as Italian household income caught up with the period’s norm for the other eurozone nations, so much so that…
Central banker: extinction of the species
July 9, 2019“Of course our central bank is independent”, the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, pretty much just declared, just before dismissing by presidential decree (on 7th July) the boss of Turkey’s central bank, Murat Cetinkaya, stating that “a central bank cannot ignore the signals sent by the President”. It was in the last century and…
Have populists become conservatives ?
June 29, 2019There was a time when “populism” was synonymous with governmental financial mismanagement and irresponsibility. Far exceeding budget constraints, the leaders of these groups and realms of thought would empty the public treasury, use up reserves and bring about monetary crises, inflation, capital outflows, recession and even payment defaults. In short, the reigning populists’ disdain…
Finance: at the heart of the climate emergency
June 18, 2019The UK is hoping to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. However, one of the important drivers that will help overcome the greatest challenge of our time – climate change – is outside governmental control. A nation cannot claim to be substantially reducing its greenhouse emissions without first regulating the flow of liquidity channelled towards…
The Monetary Theory (MMT) that has nothing Modern about it
June 11, 2019I’ve been writing it since 2010. I’ve released several books and hundreds of articles meticulously defending the position. Sovereign States – that being those who issue their own currency independently of any indexation – should learn to love, or at the very least live with, their public deficits. Because a nation that controls its…
China is quietly quaking in its boots
June 5, 2019Is China on the brink of a crisis similar to the one suffered last year by Argentina, due to a defective balance of payments? In such a situation, China would see itself short on dollars, unable to support its own currency! As for many other sovereign nations, the Yuan is built on its country’s…
Back to the deutschemark ?
May 28, 2019Martin Feldstein, a Harvard economist, wrote premonitorily in 1997 that the euro’s introduction “would exacerbate economic cycles by worsening unemployment in certain member states. Such economic woes would contribute to a crisis of confidence in the Union”. In fact, those who were convinced that the Union’s crisis since 2009 would only be a one-off…
