Political Economy

UPDATE: 12 Jan 2010: I am re-publishing this for the third time because of the situation at AIG. The question that Tim Iacono asked on his site a year ago in the post "Why aren't Americans rioting?" is based on an article from Alternet.…

When the euro was introduced about ten years ago, the pessimists didn't give it much chance of reaching its tenth anniversary. The euro, or so the argument went, was doomed from the outset because of the wide spread in economic performance…

What are the Swiss doing selling dollars? I don't have an answer to this question. But, I thought I would posit it because a reader tipped me off to a development via the Blog Alea:

Politicians in Washington D.c. have cooked up a nice way to re-create the mistakes of the Great Depression by attaching a 'Buy American' provision onto the stimulus bill making its way through Congress. Apparently the Canadians and…

This is pretty funny actually (Hat tip Michael Turk).

You heard the quotes (China slams U.S. profligacy). Here's the video. After some brief introductory remarks Chinese Premier Wen gets down to ripping into the United States. If you want to get right to his most quotable remarks, they begin…

Bill Gross, the founder of PIMCO and manager of the world's largest bond fund, has just released his most recent Economic Outlook. In it, he takes a tack regarding the fix to the present turmoil in the markets with which I disagree.…

Smarting from Tim Geithner's comments about China manipulating, its currency, the Chinese have retaliated with a condemnation of U.S. economic policy in the harshest of terms. At the World Economic Forum, Chinese Premier Wen went on the…

Government policy must be well-crafted in order to avoid negative unintended consequences that arise when the government inserts itself into the private sector. And this is where I am having a problem with the Obama Administration.…

You may have already seen the Warren Buffett interview on Dateline from last Sunday. In it, he gives a sober analysis of what to expect from the new Obama Administration in terms of economic policy. The long and short of it is that we…