Political Economy

Today, rather than write to a single theme, I am going to highlight a number of stories that I have seen over the past few days that I think are important. Spain. Bad debts in Spain are now declining ever so slightly. The latest data for…

Topics for today: Tail risk from Ukraine is increasing, giving rise to investment opportunity Argentina is still a basket case US housing will not add appreciably to a US growth acceleration I think the big news in the markets is…

The big news in the markets today is the standoff in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian armed rebels and the Ukrainian military. This has European markets selling off. The potential for problems in eastern Ukraine is something we should…

The Managing Director of the IMF and the chief economist are making no bones about it. More action by the ECB is inevitable. It is "just a question of timing," says Lagarde and "sooner was better than later", chimed Blanchard, the chief…

This week’s theme post will be exclusively about Greece because I think the Greek bond deal is emblematic of trends we see in markets and the real economy. And of course, the big news in the past few days is Greece. Its 5-year government…

By Marc Chandler There seems to be a stepped effort by ECB officials to talk the euro down. The process began with Draghi last week indicated that the euro has become a more salient factor as it poses a deflationary risk and threatens the…

This is a loaded topic. This entry, however, is not intended to be political. Very few things in economics are good or bad in themselves, but rather can be good under certain conditions or bad under others. I want to try to tease out as…

Yesterday, I laid out what the annexation of Texas in 1845 might say about Vladimir Putin’s motives in Crimea. My conclusion, however, was that, whatever Putin’s motives, the Texas annexation tells us military confrontation was not to be…

In 1845, the United States annexed the Republic of Texas, a breakaway territory from the Republic of Mexico. This annexation created great hostility between the US and Mexico, leading to the Mexican-American war in 1846. The events are 170…

By Marc Chandler In response to the Crimean referendum, new sanctions have been announced. The European Union has announced sanctions against 21 Russian individuals. This was the bare minimum expected. It will include travel visa bans and…