Stormy weather ahead

March 13, 2016

  The financial crisis of 2008, and Great Recession that followed it, was the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s. The economies of the developed nations have never really recovered since the 2008 crash and weaknesses in the financial system, low investment, high unemployment and low growth have persisted. The […]

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The Economics of Brexit: Vince Cable and Norman Lamont Debate

March 9, 2016

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research hosted an interesting and detailed discussion of the Economics of Brexit between Vince Cable and Norman Lamont. Here is the full video – with look with lots of interesting arguments and information.

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Some recent items of interest

March 5, 2016

  Tax Plan Showdown: Hillary Clinton vs. the Republicans The Tax Policy Center has analysed Hillary Clinton’s various tax proposals, which means we now have data for the top three Republican candidates and the top Democratic candidate: Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, and Clinton. Click the links for details. Or just look at the […]

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Germany’s flawed plans for Europe

March 1, 2016

  In a perceptive analysis written three years ago Yannis Varoufakis argued that ‘Europe needs a hegemonic Germany’, that like the USA did in relation to global capitalism after WWII Germany needed to take control and manage the entire European economy but in order to deliver the required hegemonic leadership Germany needed to move beyond […]

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Some recent items of interest

February 27, 2016

  Thomas Piketty proposes a “A New Deal for Europe” “The far right has surged in just a few years from 15 percent to 30 percent of the vote in France, and now has the support of up to 40 percent in a number of districts. Many factors conspired to produce this result: rising unemployment […]

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The EU’s banking union is a recipe for disaster

February 25, 2016

  On 1 January 2016 the EU’s banking union, which was planned to be an EU-level banking supervision and resolution system, officially came into force. The move to the banking union is the most significant regulatory outcome of the financial crisis of 2008, and the resulting Eurozone crisis of 2010, and it is claimed that […]

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European solidarity Greek style

February 20, 2016

  Article 2 of the Treaty establishing the EuropeanCommunity included the task of promoting economic and social cohesion and solidarity between Member States and that the strengthening of economic and social cohesion. The preamble of the Maastricht Treaty establishing the European Union said that its signatories desired “to deepen the solidarity between their peoples while […]

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IMF admits it got it wrong on Greece

February 20, 2016

  The IMF formally announced on January 29th that it changed the policy of exceptional access criteria, in essence reversing a highly political decision of the Fund back in 2010, a decision that saved the euro and paved the way for half a decade of economic devastation that has impoverished the Greek people. In the […]

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Some recent items of interest

February 17, 2016

  A very smart analysis of the political economy of the USA presidential election by Joel Kotkin entitled ‘We Now Join the U.S. Class War Already in Progress’ “Class is back. Arguably, for the first time since the New Deal, class is the dominant political issue. Virtually every candidate has tried appealing to class concerns, […]

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The Funniest Papers in the History of Economics

February 15, 2016

“The Funniest Papers in the History of Economics”, by stand-up economist Yoram Bauman, presented at the American Economic Association Humor Session, January 4, 2016 (found by my pal Andrew).     BTW – if you are viewing this video using Safari in OSX and part of the video is cut off you can quickly fix […]

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Democracy in Europe Movement 25 (DiEM25)

February 11, 2016

  On the 9th of February, 2016 Yanis Varoufakis and Srecko Horvat launched a movement called Democracy in Europe Movement 25 (DiEM25) in Berlin. What is DiEM25? DiEM25 is a grassroots movement campaigning for a more democratic European Union by the year 2025. Within 10 years, DiEM25 aims to achieve four goals: To introduce full […]

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Chinese currency instability

February 10, 2016

  China has been running a very large trade surplus for over a decade. The Chinese surplus is part of the significant imbalances in the Chinese economy, imbalances which cannot be sustained and which are already in the process of being painfully adjusted (see this article for a detailed analysis of these imbalances). The Chinese […]

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The Saudi low oil price strategy has backfired

February 5, 2016

  At the pivotal November 2014 Opec meeting Saudi Arabia embarked on an oil-price-cutting strategy, which is what refusing to reduce production to support prices amounted to. This Saudi strategy had several sets of opponents in its crosshairs. The first was US frackers, who posed an intermediate-term threat as the shale boom moved the USA […]

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Some recent items of interest

February 3, 2016

  Paul Mason has a very good piece in the Guardian on the perfect storm engulfing Europe “The refugee story has hardly begun. There will be, on conservative estimates, another million arriving via Turkey this year – and maybe more. The distribution quotas proposed by Germany, and resisted by many states in eastern Europe, are […]

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Why running a budget surplus is a bad idea

January 30, 2016

  The Charter for Budget Responsibility, also known as the fiscal charter, has existed since 2011 when it was first introduced by Chancellor George Osborne under the Budget Responsibility and National Audit Act 2011. The charter sets out the framework under which the government will manage its debt and public finances. Each year, it is […]

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Is the global economy headed for another crash?

January 28, 2016

  This is a video of a discussion hosted by Al Jazeera featuring three prominent economists discussing the growing signs that a global recession, and possibly another major financial crisis, is beginning. I am fairly pessimistic about the global economy. Global debts levels are dangerously high, the major Chinese adjustment is still only just starting […]

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Who wants the Euro?

January 24, 2016

  A recent Gallup International opinion poll of 15 countries of the European Union (taken between November 30 and December 3, 2015 polling 14,500 people) reveals significant changes in the level of support or scepticism about the single currency. The poll shows that in the EU countries which are not members of the eurozone the […]

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A Union of Deflation and Unemployment

January 17, 2016

  Back in 2000 a large number of countries in the EU decided to embark on a grand and strange experiment. What would happen happen if you had a monetary union without a political union, a shared currency without a shared government? What happens when you have a central bank with no government behind it […]

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Day after day – they send my friends away

January 11, 2016
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The fiscal responses of six European countries to the Great Recession

January 10, 2016

  The issue of public spending and taxation is central to the political debate in Britain, but the financial crisis that started in 2008, and the prolonged great recession that followed it, didn’t just strain public sector finances in the UK, it dislocated public budgets across Europe. The Institute of Fiscal Studies has just published […]

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