It’s been said that China’s economic development is a qualified ‘win’ for developing countries, particularly the poorest. That’s almost a stylized fact. I’d say it’s a ‘factual’ fact too. At least if the Pew Global Attitudes survey is anything to go by. As interesting as the slope of this relationship are the outliers. We can […]
Monthly Archives: August 2010
Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2010
Contributions to campaign committee and leadership PAC, Charles Schumer: source: Center for Responsive Politics Senator Schumer is a longtime sponsor of legislation for sanctions against China, on the basis of “unfair” currency practice or “currency manipulation”. His latest is the Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2010. According to Schumer, at least as of April, […]
Just sayin’
Eurozone report card — what I didn’t/couldn’t say
Thoughts on what I could not say in today’s Oxford Analytica piece — this time down to lack of space and a desire to preserve a detached tone. The piece is “Euro-area report card”, on how the externally-weaker eurozone members are faring in alleviating their overvaluations. As in the blog posts of recent weeks, the […]
Ghosts of crises past
One way I introduce the topic of the eurozone troubles is to review crises of recent decades. As is usual with currency crises, they compel some pretty heated rhetoric. It’s not surprising. When the currency is mismanaged — badly mismanaged — society suffers. Weimar Germany and Mugabe Zimbabwe are examples. So should be post-WW1 Britain, […]
Adjusting to shocks: How are we doing? (Part II)
Italysource: open-thinking.com Portugalsource: open-thinking.com Spainsource: open-thinking.com Italy and Portugal do not appear massively overvalued on these measures, about eight percent above where they started in 2000. This should not be hard to remedy. Spain has a further road to travel, about 16% overvalued on the BIS measure of real-effective exchange rates. Irelandsource: open-thinking.com Ireland is […]
Adjusting to shocks: How are we doing?
Fragrant Harbor I gave a lecture to Georgetown MBA and public policy students here this morning, on the travails of the eurozone. Preparing this presentation forced me to collect the data and assess how “adjustment” is going so far in the Club Med economies. When I say adjustment, I mean getting prices in line with […]