Latest posts
Global Manufacturing Steadies As She Goes, Or Does She?
The year got off on a much better foot than might have been expected, at least as far as global manufacturing is concerned. As the JP Morgan report puts it: “The global manufacturing sector continued to record belowtrend growth at …...
A Month In Spain That Didn’t Shake The World
Journalists are undoubtedly having hard time following official economic policy in Spain at the moment. The core of the problem they face is that we have a hydra headed government which speaks with many tongues. In some ways the lack...
Arming The Bazooka?
Well, this one is just too good to miss, since it seems to have appeared online a matter of minutes after I put up my last post: IMF to Seek $1 Trillion Boost Amid Euro Crisis The International Monetary Fund … Continue reading → Related p...
Monti, The Full Version
The version in question is an interview with the Financial Times. A summary was available here, but now they have gone live with the whole interview. If you can raise it on Google or something then it is well worth … Continue reading → No...
The Massendowngrade Effect
Well, that was the week that was, wasn’t it? It started with a cheerful, upbeat market response to both the impact of the ECB’s 3 year LTRO and the growing impression that Hungary was going to make some sort of … Continue reading &#...
Playing Chicken And Rooster With Hungary
Tension surrounding the application of a series of so-called “unorthodox policies” by Hungary’s Fidesz government has certainly been rising in recent days. While Washington has been reasonably quiet as govenment emissary Tamas Felle...
How to Spend It, and the economics of the useless
Swinging off this post at Unlearning Economics, I was motivated to write a long comment that really ought to be blogged. The industrial economics of extreme wealth is an interesting subject. It’s often been observed that a lot of the … Co...
From Here To Eternity, Hungarian Style
Hungary’s unofficial ambassador to the IMF,Tamás Fellegi, is reportedly facing a “terrible atmosphere” after his arrival in Washington on an exploratory mission whose objective is to open up communication about a new financial life...
The Rain In Spain Falls Mainly On The Journalists, It Seems
Things in Spain are never exactly what they seem to be. This is a painful lesson that even Angela Merkel must have learnt in recent days, especially since she put her credibility so much on the line in backing the … Continue reading → No...
Italy Braces Itself For The Full Monti
The Italian government, Mario Monti informed the country’s parliament last Thursday, is now planning to concentrate its attentions on achieving economic growth. A timely decision this, since the statistics office announcement a d...
Is Finland Really A Closet Member Of The Eurozone Periphery?
At a time when many eyes look hopefully towards the ECB for the kind of action which may prove to be the salvation of the much beleagured Eurozone other, more critical, ones are casting themselves back over the recent track record of …...
If you don’t want to read about the content, this is the post for you
So, a bit of Euro-summit processology and diplo-speak. Why not? This was a failure of diplomacy, after all – all the states involved are allies and have largely convergent interests, the problem is managing conflict politely, but here we are. T...
A Deep Seated Hostility Towards European Construction?
The British decision to veto the proposed new EU treaty is not surprisingly provoking an avalanche of commentary this weekend. Among journalists, at least, there seems to be a consensus that David Cameron committed some kind of major diplomatic...
Not Really Uniting, to Not Really Save the Euro…Not Really
The British newspapers are full of lines like “UK vetoes EU uniting to save euro” and worse. This illuminates a huge problem with the European Union. The first problem is that this assumes that somebody’s going to save the euro. Thi...
The Extraordinary Aside
Bond contracts and diplomatic notes aren’t the only places where the casual asides can be more rewarding than the main text. NASA announced yesterday that its Kepler space telescope has helped scientists identify an exoplanet clearly positioned...
Chart of the week, IMF edition
Via the TUC Blog, this chart from the IMF is worth studying. It shows the sources of public debt in Europe since 2007 for Germany, Italy, France, and the UK. You will notice that: yes, Virginia, the Germans bailed out the banks. Also, the Germans car...
Irrelevant Merkozy
So “Merkel acts to save the euro”, as various British headline writers misleadingly put it. This action consists of proposing that the 17 eurozone states make a side-agreement – therefore not requiring a full Inter-Governmental Conf...
Can’t Anyone Here Play This Game?
Politics in the Caucasus bring Casey Stengel to mind on a regular basis. In the most recent instance, people in South Ossetia refuse to convert their separatist polity into a “guided democracy.” (Why you should maybe care about South Osse...
Last Days Of Pompeii?
This week we got what seemed to be some good news in the ongoing Euro debt crisis. Bond spreads in many of the countries on Europe’s periphery tightened vis-their German equivalents. Unfortunately we also got some bad news to go with it (no sil...
It’s not dead, it’s resting
Financial Times 22 November 2011: In the longer term lending markets, Europe’s banks have largely been unable to raise new senior unsecured debt, the bread and butter of their funding, in recent months as investors fret over the effects of the euro...
