Latin America appeared in force at the G-20 Summit in Seoul. Two of the three Latin American presidents there were women, Presidents Dilma Rousseff of Brazil and Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina, who likewise represented half of the female leaders at the G-20. Unprecedented. Latin interests in the G-20 are diverse, given Argentina’s heavy […]
Thank God he does! Earlier this week I wrote a piece (click here) about money men who don’t understand country risk writing investment letters prescribing economic policy to the US government. Bill Gross, founder of mega-bond fund, Pacific Investment Management Co. (PIMCO) out of sunny Newport Beach CA, criticized the Federal Reserve and its policy […]
The prevailing view coming out of the G-20 Summit last week is that US monetary policy is as much to blame for the precarious state of the global economy as is China’s exchange rate policy. A deluge of dollars is causing a speculative bubble in emerging markets. This analysis is wrong. U.S. monetary policy should be kept just where it […]
Very nice, short piece today from CSFB (below) on what China is doing to correct the global imbalances (i.e., to reduce its trade surpluses, which mirror US and other countries’ trade deficits) and to shift its economy to a healthier foundation based on domestic demand. While President Obama gets pre-election press pressuring China’s prime minister […]
Coming from me, a defense of Barack Obama may surprise my readers. That’s because they may not have read the fine print! Some of his policies I haven’t exactly agreed with (principally, the expensive health care reform, which at a time of rapidly rising sovereign debt, was imprudent). I reluctantly supported Obama for president in 2008 […]
China is an economically successful country. Growth rates of 8-11% per year. Fx reserves north of $2.4 trillion, closing in on 20% of US GDP. Investment rates that represent 40-50% of GDP (vs. 15-20% in the US). Private credit growth of 32.5% last year, vs. 5.6% in the U.S. A Human Development Index that now stands at 49.7, […]
The Economist’s lengthy Special Report on Latin America last week is worth a read (see leader below), even though it failed to emphasize and adequately explain two critical causes of the region’s recent success — 1) the consensus among Latin American politicians that conquering inflation has benefitted the poor and strengthened democracy; and 2) the massive build-up in fx reserves that […]
Machiavelli, more than any thinker in history, made his name synonymous with a type of human behavior — self-interested, cunning, ruthless. He wrote about ancient Rome as well as Italy and the Mediterranean world of the 15th-16th centuries, extolling such leaders as Ferdinand of Aragon, the successful king of Spain who oversaw his empire’s aggrandizement, as well […]
Fitch Ratings today published a press release revising the “Outlook” on its “BBB” rating of Russian government bonds to positive from stable (see a Fitch press release below). Rating agencies – Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch – have been under fire since their high structured real estate ratings were downgraded rapidly during the recent financial […]
IRAQ POST-ELECTION VIOLENCE 18 Jul: Suicide bomber kills 43 in attack on government-backed Sunni militia in Radwaniya near Baghdad 7 Jul: Series of bombings targeting Shia pilgrims attending festival in Baghdad leave more than 40 people dead 20 Jun: 26 killed in twin suicide car bombings close to bank in Baghdad 21 May: Car […]
Shallow piece in the NYTimes today on a modest slowdown in economic growth reported in China for the second quarter, prettily written by non-economists. For a better analysis, not so elegantly written, have a look at the CSFB note from today (below) that explains that growth has slowed due to slackening investment (in Chinese terms […]
Mr. President, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have General Petraeus come in and save your Afghan policy at the same time as you have been associated with MoveOn.org, which called him “General Betray Us” on the pages of the New York Times in 2007. I don’t want to be the guy always criticizing […]
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