I think the world may be fragmenting into increasingly separate economic and cultural regions, one dominated by China, another led but not dominated by the US, with other nations watching and wondering how best to position themselves. This reminds me of the novel 1984. * When people refer to a world like that in George… Continue Reading
Tag Archives: international finance
Slow progress in reforming the IMF
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 evolved to do something quite different – provide emergency lending and financial advice to countries… Continue Reading
Rekindling the spirit of 1944?
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 of that system depended on the economic and financial dominance of a single self-interested nation,… Continue Reading
The international impact of abolishing China’s capital controls
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 stated policy goals. China has already had a very large impact on the international financial… Continue Reading
The international financial system isn’t going to be reformed any time soon
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 gripe about US monetary policy and the damage done by the international monetary system to… Continue Reading
How to evade capital controls
The latest data on China’s foreign exchange reserves, showing a rise of $130 billion to $3.4 trillion, suggest that capital is flowing into China again after an apparent outflow ahead of the change of government in late 2012. There is also growing evidence of Chinese residents smuggling capital into China by disguising it as exports. The… Continue Reading