Yves here. A tongue-in-cheek article in the Financial Times, Putin putting Europe in its place, written from Putin’s viewpoint, concluded:
Read more...“As to your plans for emergency economic aid for Ukraine, this is an excellent plan. They could use the money and I’d rather not shell out myself. Incidentally, to save time why not make the cheques payable to Gazprom?”
Yves here. The writing is delicious. But one thing that is frustrating (and of course quite deliberate) in reading the Western media account of the standoff in Ukraine is that they airbrush out how the West stoked this conflict and can hardly be surprised that Putin finally felt compelled to respond.
Read more...Yves here. Although Keen’s use of the Godzilla metaphor is fun, the unvarnished facts he presents are plenty alarming. Bank of England Governor Mark Carney is actually gleeful at the prospect that England’s banking sector might grow to be as large relative to its economy as Iceland’s and Cyprus’ on the eve of their busts. But even worse, Carney’s enthusiasm for a banking sector that continues with its cancerous (or as Keen would have it, monstrous) growth gives license to bank lobbyists in the US and Europe to press for high rates of growth in their finance sectors so as to defend their national champions.
Read more...ves here. This Real News Network interview with Yilmaz Akyuz, formerly the Director of the Division on Globalization and Development Strategies at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), describes how the problems that produced the financial crisis have morphed into new, no less troubling problems. One key part of this discussion focuses on how China has adapted to its considerably smaller trade surplus, and why having Germany as the new excessive exporter poses new perils to the global economy.
Read more...Climate change is a hard policy question to address because it pits those who believe in evidence against those committed to knowing as little as possible.
Read more...Why defining “liquidity trap” precisely matters in understanding crisis dynamics, and Keynes, and not Krugman, got it right.
Read more...Britain endeavors to build new nuclear power plants to avert an electric crisis in 20 years – with the retirement of nearly all the nation’s installed capacity, as it falls prey to age. Is the United States is destined for the same crisis?
Read more...You cannot make this stuff up.
Read more...One of the noteworthy elements of Davos, at least according to media accounts, was the cheery, self-congratulatory tone among the Davos Men, at least until the final day, when the emerging markets rout began. But one of the front they thought they’d gotten under control, Europe, may be about to enter a new phase of political stress.
Read more...Real News Network interviewed climate scientist Michael Mann, who has come under vicious and persistent attack by right-wing groups who decided to play a reductivist game and focus their attack on one chart Mann developed which became important in popular discussions of climate change.
Read more...Yves here. With Argentina one of the emerging markets economies whose currency has taken a huge tumble, its aggressive pro-labor, redistribution-oriented policies have come under attack (as an aside, one has to note that Turkey, which was touted as a model emerging economy a few years back, is also fighting a currency downspiral). And a predictable by-product is that some of Argentina’s policies have been misrepresented. For instance, it’s widely accused of “living beyond its means”. Yet as this post shows, the government ran surpluses in eight of the past ten years.
Read more...Heiner Flassbeck is one of the few economists to get into positions of influence despite being firmly opposed to the prevailing doctrine of neoliberalism. He’s also direct and articulate.
Read more...For those of us who grew up under totalitarian regimes, it is noteworthy that Europeans are resorting to a time-honoured tradition: telling jokes as a form of defiance.
Read more...In case you missed it, it’s ugly out there. US markets swooned as an unexpectedly weak manufacturing report, the ISM, was so bad it couldn’t be attributed solely to bad weather and deepened investor funk.
Read more...Emerging markets-related disruption continued overnight, as the Nikkei fell nearly 2%, pounded by the rise in the yen due to its status as a flight currency. Other Asian markets took a hit as well, with only Australia emerging relatively unscathed.
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