The International Monetary Fund has rethought its doctrine on capital controls. The IMF, which previously favored unfettered flows of money across borders, now accepts that controls are sometimes necessary. This is a real improvement, yet it’s incomplete because it lacks a mechanism for supervision and enforcement. The fund can’t rectify that omission by itself. Member governments can and should. […]
There is reason to believe that the global economy will have to navigate troubled waters till 2015, since the Eurozone is now in recession and the crisis will take time to abate. Europe has made several important moves since December 2011, by injecting some essential liquidity in the system. But it is necessary to understand […]
Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party is on the verge of reclaiming power in Japan, giving him seven months to convince voters he can revive the economy before another round of elections in July. The LDP is forecast to crush Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s Democratic Party of Japan in the Dec. 16 election for the lower […]
Default became a dirty word in the United Arab Emirates after 2009, when Dubai World requested a six-month delay on payments on US$26 billion in debt. So much so that when UAE energy company Dana Gas this month missed repayment on a US$920 million Islamic bond, local press hesitated to label it as a default. […]
It’s official: Europe has double-dipped. The 17-country euro zone has fallen into its second recession since 2008, as figures released on Nov. 15 showed gross domestic product declining 0.1 percent during the third quarter. That followed a 0.2 percent contraction during the previous three months, according to the European Union’s statistics office. There were some […]
Japan ruling party lawmaker Mieko Nakabayashi isn’t just worried that her Democratic Party will lose power in next month’s election; she fears a comeback by rival conservative Liberal Democrats will spell a return to the prolonged one-party rule that critics blame for many of the country’s past policy ills. Three years after the Democratic Party of […]
Can China avoid becoming Japan? In a few decades’ time, we may be talking about how today’s up-and-coming economic superpower is starting to look like the Land of the Rising Sun and Falling Expectations. But before that, another country is first in line: the Republic of Korea. Despite differences in politics and size, China can […]
Michael Feroli, chief U.S. economist at JPMorgan Chase, has a fascinating analysis out Thursday on how Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is moving to lock in new procedures for setting interest rates that will last long after his term ends in January 2014. The upshot is that Bernanke, who vowed to depersonalize the Fed, could end […]
China’s economic slowdown may persist into next year amid a lack of funding for approved infrastructure projects, according to an academic adviser to the nation’s central bank. Expansion will be 7.3 percent to 7.4 percent in the fourth quarter and 7 percent to 7.5 percent in the first half next year, Song Guoqing, a Peking University professor, said […]
It is the mark of science and perhaps rational thought to operate with a falsifiable understanding of how the world works. So it is fair to ask economists a fundamental question: what could happen that would cause you to revise your views of how the economy operates and acknowledge that the model you had been […]
looking beyond borders 