Since the collapse of communism, capitalism in its various different flavours is the only realistic option for countries wanting high living standards. But the US/UK variant is failing to deliver mass prosperity, which threatens to undermine it and generate a … Continued
China’s $3.9 trillion foreign exchange reserves were not planned but arose as a side effect of a strategy, now ended, of keeping the RMB exchange rate lower than the market would have set it. * Last week I visited the … Continued
Countries that had similar levels of economic prosperity two or three generations ago have diverged spectacularly. Getting economic growth right makes a huge difference to the lives of people. Here are two examples: The US and Argentina, and South Korea … Continued
Africa’s economic potential is usually thought to lie in its natural resources. But the continent’s people may be its greatest strength. One of the few areas where long term forecasts have some value is demography, the study of population size and structure. … Continued
The city of Dresden, capital of the Free State of Saxony, in the east of Germany, has a grimly melancholy reputation in the UK as the town most comprehensively destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II, a level of … Continued
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a great example of an institution that was created for one purpose – to police the system of fixed exchange rates set up in the 1944 Bretton Woods treaty – which has survived and … Continued
I was recently asked to recommend blogs and other resources on the Chinese economy. In case other people would find it useful, I list the main ones here. Bear in mind that, not reading Chinese, I’m confined to English sources … Continued
The leader of one of our main international financial institutions argues that we need to remember and learn from the cooperative spirit in which the Bretton Woods international financial system was born in 1944. Unfortunately the creation and later success … Continued
While the US and UK economies are both recovering quite decisively from their post-crisis recessions, the Eurozone is not. And unemployment is at appalling levels in much of “peripheral” Europe, particularly for young people. Current macroeconomic policy consists of low … Continued
Perhaps a little lost in the Christmas shopping rush was an interesting article in the 2013 Q4 Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin about what might happen when China finally abolishes all controls on its international capital flows, consistent with its … Continued
In a recent IMF working paper I came across the term “North Atlantic financial crisis”. I hadn’t heard this before and it was the first clue of several that the report was written by Indian economists with a well justified … Continued
The fall in the Indian rupee in the last few weeks is a result of three things: i) a current account deficit that made the country vulnerable to a sudden exit of funds; ii) the inherent volatility and instability of … Continued
At a time when President Obama is under extreme pressure to take some sort of military action against the Assad regime in Syria, assuming it can be shown to be responsible for the horrible chemical weapons attack on its own … Continued
There is a general misconception in the UK that suicide rates are high in Sweden. “Must be those long, dark winters”, people will offer as an explanation. That misconception has been strengthened by the “Scandi-noir” phenomenon, the great success in … Continued
Remember all the commentary on the impending disaster of US federal government deficits? Which would force the cutting or closure of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and anything that helps low income or economically unlucky people? Well the US still has … Continued