Income equality and commitment to secondary education

source: World Bank, IMF, open-thinking.com The 50 countries above have annual income per capita of USD 5000 or greater. Correlation does not equal causation. But there’s sure some intuitive sense here. On balance, why would the rich pay for the education of other people’s children? Sure, plenty of enlightened ones would know this is sensible. […]

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, […]

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 […]