Political Economy

By Marc Chandler The time tested way to dampen popular unrest is to provide food and entertainment to the masses. The problem of course is that sometimes the funds are lacking. In Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, for example, this is not the case…

Let us start with honesty about budget deficits and government debt. There is no honest economic argument against running budget deficits when the economy is below full employment. While we can debate about which programs government ought…

The German strategy appears to be rudderless at the moment. It is not clear what concessions it can elicit in exchange for offering a "comprehensive" solution to the debt crisis. Getting rid of wage indexing,a constitution amendment to…

China is grappling with rising inflation. This column argues that the Chinese government, instead of focusing on micro-managing the economy, should grant its central bank room for further reform of its monetary policy. To make more…

David Stockman was on Bloomberg yesterday reviewing the Obama 2011 Budget proposal. His view dovetails with the view on the budget I presented yesterday, when I said: The key, however, is that no one actually wants to cut the items in…

The WikiLeaks saga looks to be descending into a personality conflict between its leading founders. Take a look at this animated mock-up for what's going on.

Noam Scheiber's recent article on Tim Geithner is a good piece for understanding Geithner's thinking. He wants American banks to penetrate emerging markets and get even bigger. How this benefits the U.S. economy is unclear, however. It…

I was on the BBC this morning talking about the Obama FY 2012 budget proposal. Here's what I said and what I think about the proposal so far (If I get the video, I will post). This post will be more about the political tactics and…

By Rick Bookstaber In the Ming Dynasty, (1368 – 1644), China established an examination system as a merit-based approach for appointments to government office. There were three levels to the exams, with the final cut then coming through an…

By Michael Pettis Because of the lunar New Year festivities when I wrote my newsletter little had happened in China besides the 25 bp interest rate hike on Tuesday, not counting of course the never-ending stream of fireworks and the…