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Browsing Category
Political Economy
Some thoughts on Dijsselbloem’s ‘liquor and women’ intervention
Last week, I wrote how the Labour Party in the Netherlands suffered a historic defeat in parliamentary elections because voters questioned their priorities - and how this is emblematic of Western social democratic parties everywhere. And as…
Will Brexit’s trigger, now set for 29 March, mean recession?
British Prime Minister Theresa May will trigger her country’s exit from the EU on 29 March, a spokesperson for the Prime Minister has confirmed. Afterwards, the clock will be ticking, as the UK will have two years to wind up any…
This is what the Dutch election was all about
On Wednesday night, the Dutch elections saw the two parties in the governing coalition lose 37 of the 79 seats they now hold between them. That's a massive defeat frankly. Yet, the Prime Minister's party is spinning this as a win. And for…
The most important chart to see before the Dutch election
The present Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, is the first Prime Minister from a party other than the two traditional centrist parties, PdVA and the CDA, and their predecessor parties since the Dutch constitution and voting…
Some thoughts on systematic central bank policy errors
A recent post by Matthew Klein on central banks over at FT Alphaville that dovetails with some of the themes I have been writing about here at Credit Writedowns for the past decades is what preciputated this post. Let me summarize my thesis…
Great risk to Turkey as relations with Germany sour
Turkey is in the middle of a major political row with Germany. In the wake of the attempted coup d’tat last year, Turkish President Erdogan wants to change its constitution to give the President more power. And because the likely vote will…
The US trade deficit is at a five-year high
This morning data from the US Commerce Department showed the US trade deficit in January at its highest level since March 2012. The numbers were not unexpected as the $48.5 billion deficit was bang on economist estimates.
Underconsumption and the end of excess demand
Yesterday’s post on the failure of Japan’s monetary policy experiment drew some favourable commentary from a prominent macroeconomist that I want to run by you. The gist of his insight is that we have long been living in an age of an excess…
What will Trump say about Chinese manipulation at the SOTU address?
Tonight US President Donald Trump is due to give his first state of the union address. From a foreign policy perspective, the big item on the table is Russia. But from an economic perspective, the country we meed to be thinking about is…
Germany leading by example
Here's an example of Germany's leading by example on fiscal policy.