IMF Rethinks Sovereign Defaults, Again
By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness
Read more...Category Archives: Globalization
Your Humble Blogger Appears on RT’s Truthseeker
We discuss how outsourcing and offshoring are more about transferring income from low-level workers to middle and senior level managers than cost savings.
Read more...Chile’s Recent Lead Negotiator on Trans-Pacific Partnership Warns It Could Be a “Threat to Our Countries”
An important article in the Latin American press peculiarly has not gotten the attention it deserves. Or perhaps not so peculiarly, given the Obama administration’s intention to keep the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations as far out of the public eye as possible.
Read more...Are Germans Poorer than Other Europeans?
Yves here There’s been a great deal of consternation over a report that found that the median Spanish and Italian households are more than three times as wealthy as the median German household. This report says that these differences aren’t what they seem to be.
Read more...Russia’s Plan For The BRICS To Dismantle The Dollar System
The status of the US dollar as the world reserve currency gives the US tremendous advantages. Among them: it allows the Fed to export inflation, while the Federal Government can run a huge deficit with impunity. But now an angry Russia has had enough!
Read more...Japanese Movement Against TPP Growing
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
This Real News Network video on resistance to the Trans-Pacific Partnership in Japan (one of our military protectorates) explains some implications of TPP for health care policy, but also gives a glimpse of how our post-national global elites would like the nature of the State to change. Of course, the TPP negotiations are secret, which cannot but give the impression that TPP’s advantages are not likely to be readily apparent to the citizens who putatively give sovereign states their legitimacy. So, although US discussions have focused mainly on content and intellectual property issues, it would seem that the powers that be have bigger fish to fry.
Read more...Secret “Free Trade” Negotiations Will Gut Regulations, Further Enrich Multinationals and Big Financial Firms
It’s a sign of the times that a reputable economist, Dean Baker, can use the word “corruption” in the headline of an article describing two major trade deals under negotiation and no one bats an eye.
Read more...Bundesbank Looks to Undermine Italy
By Delusional Economics, who is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from http://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2013/02/europe-waits-for-italy/“>MacroBusiness.
Another chapter in the Italy political story comes to a close as a government is formed, for how long who knows, but a familiar figure appears to be playing puppet master…
Read more...The Inflation Dog Didn’t Bark, But What About the Others?
By Eric Yeldan, Professor of Economics and Dean at the Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences Yasar University. Cross posted from Triple Crisis
The IMF released the April edition of its World Economic Outlook (WEO). One of the key analytical chapters (Chapter 3) of the Report is titled “The Dog that Didn’t Bark: Has Inflation Been Muzzled, or Was It Just Sleeping?” Its main argument (or rather sort of a mystery that needs to be resolved, in the words of its authors) is that over the course of the previous crisis episodes we used to witness severe increases in unemployment along with a simultaneous fall in inflation. Yet, during the current great recession there has been very little movement in inflation, while unemployment rates soared almost everywhere; —hence the metaphor: inflation (the dog…) does not respond (… bark). And the alleged mystery is but why?
The WEO suggests two candidates for explaining the mystery. Perhaps instead of looking for dogs, they should stop ignoring the elephant in the room.
Read more...What Drives US North Korea Policy?
This Real News Network interview with Peter Lee, an Asia Times Online columnist who has been covering China for 30 year, is a welcome antidote to some of the superficial, stereotype-laden coverage of North Korea, not just what its posturing means for the US but other major players in East Asia.
Read more...Gold Crash Signals End but End of What?
Whither gold?
Read more...Why Germany (Mistakenly) Thinks it Can Kill Its Export Markets Through Austerity and Still Prosper
I’ve mentioned repeatedly that Germany wants contradictory things: it wants to stop financing its trade partners (the periphery countries in Europe) and yet wants to continue to run large trade surpluses. I took this to be a sign of German wishful thinking, or just politicians figuring the incoherent strategy can still be maintained for the duration of their time in office.
A post by Yanis Varoufakis show that the Germans at least have better delusions that I realized.
Read more...Bill Greider on Why Paul Krugman Was So Wrong
A good piece in the Nation by Bill Greider, which focuses on Krugman’s long standing support of free trade, and how, contrary to his predictions, the results were not positive for ordinary American workers.
Read more...TransPacific Partnership Threatens Sovereignty and Public Ownership
Although the TransPacific Partnership negotiations are being kept firmly under wraps, what little has leaked out is so appalling that it legitimates Alex Jones-type fears about world government, or more accurately, a market state where the interests of globe-spanning businesses come first. The TPP expands on NAFTA’s extreme investor-state regime that allows foreign companies to directly challenge a government’s derivatives regulation, capital controls, and other financial, health, and environmental policies.
We’ll be writing more about the TPP, and this Real News Network segment provides a good introduction.
Read more...Will Slovenia Be the Next Victim of German Politics?
The IMF says that Slovenia will need to issue €3 billion in bonds this year. The country may be forced to seek painful assistance from the Troika. Will Germany be the heavy as it was with Cyprus?
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