WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | Does anybody remember the origin of modern Economics? Yes, what did those guys—Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill—that we love to quote, try to achieve? They saw Economics just as part of a wider intellectual effort, namely philosophy or, at the very least, ethics.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | We are, again, in the midst of an earnings season. But, should we call it ‘earning season’ or ‘earnings exceed the forecast session’? Because companies tend to earn more than they expected, and also more than the markets’ forecast. Another nail in the coffin of the Efficient Market Hypothesis?
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | Progress, what progress? We live in an era of endless technological possibilities. Or so they say. We have drones to bomb every soul in the remotest desert; GPS to avoid getting lost while paying a visit to our in-laws (it remains to be seen if that is actually a good thing or not); cellphones to tell us how many calories we have burnt during a walk; robots to play the nurses’ role in hospitals (and sometimes they’re even nicer); and, soon, we will see driverless cars which, according to those who have tried them, are way safer than the current, human-controlled ones. In the meantime, this article is being written from Washington, DC, and it will be edited and posted online in New York, on a London-based website.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | In 2012, 70 companies drilled 134 deepwater wells in the US side of the Gulf of Mexico. On the Mexican side, only one company drilled 6 wells: Pemex. The disparity is one of the reasons explaining why Mexico’s oil production has fallen from 3.5 million bpd in 2005 to 2.5 now. According to the US Geological Survey, the Mexican part of the Gulf of Mexico is, after the Arctic, the largest unexplored oil region in the world.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | Stanley Fischer will almost certainly not achieve his dream of being managing director of the IMF, but his legacy can still be deeper than it would have been had he reached it. Earlier this year, the Zambian-born Israeli-American economist completed a successful eight year mandate in the Bank of Israel, and he is now poised to be the vice-chairman of the Federal Reserve.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | For all the talk about the jobless recovery, Barack Obama has, in less than 5 years, created three times more jobs than George W. Bush did in eight years. Under the current president’s tenure, 3,140,000 jobs have been added to the US economy. It is not a bad record of achievement, at least taking into account that, in January 2009—when Obama moved to the White House–, the United States destroyed 600,000 jobs, its worst number in 34 years. Talk about legacies.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | Dean Tenerelli started investing in Spain one year ago. At the time, many of his colleagues thought that he was going too far. Certainly, he went further than anyone else. But, so far, his bet is rendering excellent yields. Tenerelli manages the T. Rowe Price European Stock, a SICAV with more than $900 million (approximately 700 million euros) in assets, of which around $150 million are in Spanish companies shares. Now, others, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Carlos Slim, have followed this manager’s example and have started to pour money into Spain. Tenerelli has talked with The Corner over the phone about his experience.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | A new crisis has hit the EU-US negotiations to create the transatlantic free trade area known as TTIP. Now, the main culprit seems to be Edward Snowden and his revelations about the US National Security Agency (NSA). US defense and national security apparatus have just ignored the situation. However, the concern is much more palpable in the US Treasury, the Commerce Department and the USTR.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | To lose faith in mankind, there is nothing better than following the debt ceiling and government shutdown debate in the United States. Just one example: a big chunk of the whole discussion has been a medical device tax that, once implemented, would generate in revenue the equivalent of 0.015 percent of the US GDP–or, approximately, 3 percent of the federal deficit.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | What is the difference between the current fiscal crisis and government shutdown and an eventual U.S. default after Oct. 17th? The same between a “disruptive” event and a “major macro systemic event”. Think of the 1929 Crash or the 1973 oil shock.