Political Economy

Forget about the executive orders and Trump press conferences. This is all for show - reality TV, if you will. Concentrate instead on what actually happens, what policies are actually implemented and what impact this is going to have on the…

Yesterday, I was talking to a veteran journalist based in Rome. He remarked that youth unemployment in southern Italy was 60% and that this was one of the biggest problems to deal with politically. The spectre of strong, able-bodied young…

Earlier today, I was listening to an interview with IMF head Christine Lagarde dance around the issue of the unsustainability of Greece’s debt load. And she said something very telling. She said that debt haircuts were not on the table but…

Bloomberg View had a good column today on the popularity of the European single currency. The article shows how the euro has gone from being unloved in Germany at introduction in 2002 to well accepted, while the opposite has happened in…

Yesterday three big things happened in three different eurozone economies that I think are interrelated. And I am going to tell you what I believe they mean for the European political economy by tying them together in this post under the…

Early on in President Trump’s new administration, too much of his energy is being placed on divisive ‘cultural’ issues and not enough attention is being paid to economic policies. To the degree Trump has turned to the economy, much of his…

The FT is reporting that US President Donald Trump sees Germany as a ‘currency manipulator’ of sorts, a view bound to have negative consequences on bilateral relations. What’s more, according to the Financial Times, Trump’s top trade…

As Donald Trump attempts to make wholesale shifts in American domestic and foreign policy, there are bound to be winners and losers economically and politically. Leading German government representatives from Sigmar Gabriel to Frank Walter…

I have long suspected that an act of Parliament would be necessary to formally trigger Article 50. In an 8-3 verdict today, the UK Supreme Court affirmed this suspicion. Theresa May cannot invoke royal prerogative for the simple reason that…

If you want to know whwere Trump is headed on trade, don’t look at China or Mexico. Don’t even look at the UK. Canada is the country to watch for a number of reasons. First of all, Canada has an existing deal with the US and Mexico under…