Political Economy

Quick post outside the paywall here on some of the data coming out of the US recently FedEx bellwether I wanted to start with FedEx because it is often considered a bellwether of the US economy given its position at the center of shipping…

Framing the populist revolt In the industrialized Western world, we are living through a great age of populism. There's no doubt about that now. The trigger for it was the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2009 and the knock-on European…

Everybody's talking about this video of G-7 leaders laughing at US President Donald Trump during the recent NATO summit. While most people are just giggling about it, I think it reflects a much deeper issue. Take a look. .@JustinTrudeau,…

There are conditions under which governments can create money—or debt—without fear of inflation or excessive debt burdens. There are other conditions under which debt or money creation can lead to inflation and balance sheet problems.

Impeachment In the last couple of weeks, at the expense of other thoughts, I have been consumed by the impeachment proceedings going on in the United States. I guess this is a byproduct of my having been born in, growing up in and now…

I want to tie a number of economic and political topics together today as a way of thinking about what the next 18 months in the US will mean. And a lot of it starts with the US domestic economy. Recession watch Over the past several years,…

The latest polling data show Americans in favour of an impeachment investigation, one that the White House is telling government officials and allies to impede. I think this is an error in strategy by Trump. And the ultimate consequence may…

The US jobs report released just earlier this morning showed the US economy adding 136,000 jobs to payrolls in September, with the unemployment rate declining to a 50-year low of 3.5%. This is the latest in a batch of economic data showing…

Inter-subjectivity For the past couple of weeks, I have been listening to an audiobook recommended by a friend I recently visited in London. It It's called Sapiens - and it bills itself as "a brief history of humankind". I find the book a…

I haven't written about Brexit in months now, largely because it has become so unpredictable that I have had nothing to say. After we saw the delay that I predicted in December, the whole affair has just had too many moving parts to know…