The bailout costs ten years after the crash

August 25, 2017

It’s ten years since the the financial crisis started in 2007 when some key interbank credit markets froze setting in motion a cascade of failures in the credit system and eventually the insolvency of many large financial institutions. The resulting financial crises not only precipitated the Great Recession, which caused the economies of the developed […]

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The truth about the Irish recovery

August 20, 2017

  Ireland is the Stakhanovite of the Troika. The accepted narrative is that the Irish, unlike those untrustworthy Greeks, realised the errors of their ways, accepted an EU/IMF Programme of Financial Support and implemented difficult reforms, and have since been rewarded by a surge of economic growth. Ireland began to post impressive figures for GDP […]

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The probability of a fourth Greek bailout

August 9, 2017

  You cannot rescue a bankrupt by lending them more money. The only way to move beyond bankruptcy is to default on existing liabilities, push losses onto the creditors and thus reduce significantly the debt burden. This basic reality has been ignored by the Troika (the EU, the ECB and IMF) in its dealings with […]

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Some recent items of interest

August 4, 2017

  Anthony Barnet has published a brief extract from his forthcoming book “The Lure of Greatness: England’s Brexit and America’s Trump”. Its entitled “I’m Not English. Oh, yes you are!” and is a critical reply to an article by Paul Mason entitled “As an English person, I would like to declare up front: I do […]

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Running out of steam?

July 1, 2017

At the beginning of 2016 a lot of observers and economists were expecting a global downturn. The reason a recession was expected was because of shifts in the Chinese economy. The reason that the global recession did not occur was because China changed course and reversed its reform program. Its reform program had been designed […]

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Caution: European Narrative. Handle with Care

June 26, 2017

This is an interesting lecture by the political economist Professor Wolfgang Streeck from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany, entitled “Caution: European Narrative. Handle with Care”. The main topic of the lecture is how can one construct a unifying narrative that defines Europe. This is not an academic question. […]

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Handy chart summarising Brexit options

June 26, 2017

This chart shows the various options and consequences of the different possible Brexits (click on to see a bigger version). I think the ones worth pursuing, which are both politically feasible, are the two options on the left hand side. Unfortunately one gives too much power to the European Court of Justice and the other […]

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What just happened?

June 17, 2017

So a week after the election what to make of it all? Here are a few bits of analysis I found interesting. If anyone has found any other interesting alaysis of the election please feel free to post links in the comment section. From the BBC the day after the election there was this useful […]

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Victory for Schaeuble at the Eurogroup means no relief for Greece

June 17, 2017

  The Eurogroup meeting of eurozone Finance Minister was held last week and the main item on the agenda was the approval of another round of bailout payments to Greece which were conditional on various Troika demands being met. The meeting was considered a success in that a package was agreed but the real winner […]

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Yanis Varoufakis on the state of Europe and the Euro

June 14, 2017

It’s that man again. Varoufakis was a speaker at this week’s FundForum International conference, billed as the the world’s largest investment management event, and here is his presentation entitled: “The state of Europe and the Euro”. His main presentation argues that the economic and political problems of Europe, China, and Japan, and the rise of […]

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I was wrong about Jeremy Corbyn

June 13, 2017

  I was wrong about Jeremy Corbyn. I thought until quite late in the election campaign that his leadership would result in electoral disaster for the Labour party. The fumbling and accident prone opening period of his leadership, the apparent collapse of support in the parliamentary party, the vacuous position of the Labour leadership during […]

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A state of political disrepair: Varoufakis on Brexit, the EU, and trashing the establishment

June 13, 2017

An interview of Yannis Varoufakis by Open Democracy. The video starts with this: ”The idea that suddenly Brexit, Le Pen, Trump rose out of the woodwork, and that the liberal establishment is the only thing that can stop them – this is just a figment of the liberal establishment’s imagination.” At minute 1.42: On the […]

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The scale of the EU’s achievements in Greece

June 13, 2017

The critical Eurogroup meeting on the Greek program is this week. I thought it was worth reminding ourselves of what the EU has wrought in Greece, which can be done with a single graph which compares the Greek depression to the Great Depression, the Asian crisis of the 1990s and the Eurozone recession after 2010.

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After the euphoria wears off….

June 11, 2017

Like a lot of people I found election night to be sheer delight compared to the horrors that I was expecting. Watching the looks of horrified disbelief and confusion on the faces of the Tories as they realised that they had just shot their own foot off was something to savour. Corbyn and May defied […]

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Paris hot air

June 3, 2017

So evil Donald Trump is going to kill the planet and even the Chinese are signed up to save it. Not quite. The Paris Treaty commits the USA and Europe to making big changes to their energy production systems at great cost. The result of Paris will be to significantly increase the energy costs of […]

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Rethinking the European Union: Part Two

May 31, 2017

  Part Two: What’s wrong with the European Union? In Part One of this series of articles I charted how my general politics had evolved over quite a long period of time, and specifically how my understanding of the European Union had changed. In short how I went from being an active and enthusiastic supporter […]

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Rethinking the European Union: Part One

May 28, 2017

  “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” John Maynard Keynes   Part One: Swimming in Europe Its been a tough decade since the great financial crisis started in 2007. When the Great Moderation came to an abrupt end with the crash of the financial system I think a […]

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Chinese over-investment: Metro building

May 23, 2017

In previous post (see ‘Thinking about China‘ and ‘What is happening in China?‘) I explored how the Chinese growth model was coming to an end. Like previous ‘miracle growth’ episodes the Chinese model was based on the suppression of internal consumption and the use of external demand for exports, and above all very, very high […]

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A snapshot of global economic imbalances

May 21, 2017

  The great financial crisis of 2008 had many causes, and a very important one was the great imbalances in global trade that had developed over the preceding years. Those imbalances have not been significantly reduced and in some case they have grown worse. The result is that debt levels are rising and in some […]

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Macron’s victory in charts

May 8, 2017

I found these charts at the FT (full article here). I find it interesting that the FT thinks the final chart is an indicator of psychological state rather than an indicator of material well being. Macron can only deliver if Germany plays ball – the future of French politics now hinges on the German election.

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