Political Economy

The results of the Irish stress tests are going to be released this afternoon at 430PM Irish time. I will be talking about the implications for investors in European markets on CNBC's Power Lunch show. I think one has to be cautious…

Short-Run Actions Have Consequences In the spring of 2003 there was worldwide concern that the U.S. economy was falling into a “Japanese-like” malaise; the recovery was stalling, deflation was likely to occur and unemployment was…

By Marc Chandler Many market observers seem to be exaggerating the role of some Federal Reserve officials, in particular James Bullard, who has mentioned exiting from QE2 before completing the $60 bln of purchases. Plosser, a voting…

Here's a fabulous look into the political economy of oil by Andy Lees. His view is that the era of cheap oil is over. But, more than that, natural resources as a whole are increasingly dear. And a world of dwindling natural resources has…

After more than a year since the European debt crisis began, officials have still failed to resolve it. They raised expectations for a “grand bargain” only to crash them on the shoals of political reality. The March 24-25 Summit was to…

By L. Randall Wray Washington's deficit hysteria has morphed into gridlock over expansion of federal government debt limits. It is as if that stupid “debt clock” on Times Square had run out of electrons to keep the numbers racing ever…

By John Mauldin Loose Monetary Policies and Emerging Markets So far we have focused on the United States and other mature, developed economies that have far too much debt. With Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom, and…

The resilience of the euro in the face of seemingly incontrovertible evidence that Portugal will need to get assistance and that very same program and approach has not been enough to stabilize the Greek and Irish situation is amazing.…

Apparently, George Osborne, the current Chancellor, has such a bedroom voice that he puts the Lord Chancellor to sleep. Sweet dreams.

Reuters has reported that the parliament in Portugal will likely reject the socialist government's austerity budget, a move which will precipitate the collapse of that government, new elections and a likely bailout by the European Union.…