Should we be scared of the government?
March 29, 2021Government always caused fear and those who we now call “libertarians” always viewed public powers gaining momentum with unease since the expansion of a government’s remit has been interpreted by many citizens across the Western world as a rolling back of their own freedoms. For those who subscribe to this somewhat – to call it…
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…
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…
Keynes’s shadow is looming over Brexit
October 27, 2018“When the facts change, I change my mind”: this was one of Keynes’s maxims that became an established way of thinking. What would his attitude to Brexit have been? For or against it, he would nonetheless have been part of the negotiations to try and extract the best agreement possible, despite the strongly unfavourable conditions…