Political Economy

The following video talk is based on a must-read piece Professor Stiglitz wrote in Vanity Fair on inequality in the United States.

The U.S. narrowly avoided a federal government shutdown this past weekend. While President Obama has hailed the compromise which allowed the government to continue to function, it is already clear that more shutdown battles are coming very…

The vote reflected widespread belief that government negotiators had not been vigorous in pleading Iceland’s legal case. The situation is reminiscent of World War I’s Inter-Ally war debt tangle. Lloyd George described the negotiations…

From Wikipedia (section to discuss underlined and bolded): Though the Company was becoming increasingly bold and ambitious in putting down resisting states, it was getting clearer that the Company was incapable of governing the vast…

I was on the Alyona Show last night talking about the impending government shutdown. Regardless of your ideological predisposition, you have to see that this will have some negative effects for the economy over the short term. At this…

A year ago, in March 2010, Iceland’s economy was so small that it did not warrant much attention when 93% of its voters rejected the Social Democratic-Green government’s surrender to demands by Gordon Brown and the Dutch, the European Union…

By Marc Chandler A disproportionate amount of mind share has been devoted to the financial aspects of the crisis. Investors and policy makers alike may be distracted by this over-emphasis and thus leaving them vulnerable to other aspects…

By Win Thin Brazil Finance Minister Mantega announced macroprudential measures today, raising the IOF tax on consumer credit by 150 bp from 1.5% to 3% in order to help limit credit growth. So far, measures already taken are not working…

According to Louis Hernandez, U.S. government policy is geared toward the too big to fail banks and this undermines community banks and Credit Unions which serve small and medium sized businesses. His contention is that there is a vast…

By Win Thin Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega announced new FX measures at his press conference, but at first blush are quite underwhelming. The 6% IOF tax on local entities was extended for overseas loans with maturities up to 2…