But Does Equality Really Exist?
MADRID | By Alex García and @ADe_Tocqueville
In the World
Edmund Phelps: “Clientelism is the essence of social protection”
MADRID | By Luis Martín via Truman Factor| Last summer, Director of the Center on Capitalism and Society and winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Economics, Edmund Phelps, published “Mash Flourishing: How Grassroots Innovation Created Jobs, Challenge, and Change,” a book that analyzes the value system and intrinsic forces driving prosperity in market capitalism. Though a ‘book on Economics,’ Phelps’ latest work offers an insightful journey through modern Western economic history with an emphasis on philosophy, culture and the arts; a journey in which the author illustrates how a culture of innovation serves as the grassroots dynamism that propels “mass flourishing” in free market societies.
It’s Time To Look For Investment!
MADRID | By Luis Alcaide | Globally, investment in relation to sales figures are at their lowest level in the last 22 years, even though there is a huge amount of liquidity all over the world. What is the problem then? Crystal clear: money is not flowing and therefore growth cannot be reactivated.
Want Chinese Tourists? Be Friendly to Them
MILAN | By Mariangela Pira via Caixin | From providing water kettles in hotels to streamlining visa application procedures, European countries can do more to make Chinese tourists visiting easier.
Euro zone, Spain and Japan: a 0.3% GDP’s rise with different meanings
MADRID | By Julia Pastor | Last week it was picking season. The euro zone as a whole as well as several member coutries such as Germany, France or Greece and other core economies beyond the region like Japan reported their GDP growth in the end quarter of 2013. Both the euro area and Japan increased by 0.3%, curiously the same that Spain expanded in the same period. As European registers are a reason for content, Asian country’s mean a disappointment.
FED: “Some questions do have answers”
SAO PAOLO | By Marcus Nunes | In his recent post at Econlog Scott Sumner writes “Questions that have no answers”: There are some questions that have no answers. One example is the question: “Was monetary policy too expansionary during the housing boom?” The only sensible answer is “it depends.” It’s not clear what the Fed was trying to do during this period.
Spanish banks poised to face trouble
MADRID | By JP Marin Arrese | Not so long ago, markets gauged solvency problems in Spain to lay in former saving banks as many found themselves in a shambles. Few investors cast doubts on the main credit institutions, staunchly anchored in their extensive non-domestic business. Yet sentiment has markedly shifted as trouble is looming on Latin America. Argentina undoubtedly stands as a weird and quirky case. Still, the peso collapse has sent shivers down the spine.
Sacyr and Panama Canal Row Gives Nationalists Some Ammunition
LATAM CORRESPONDENT David Brunat | Across the Panamanian media political pundits are praising the firmness of their government in this dispute, blaming the GUPC and particularly Spanish firm Sacyr for the standoff and for putting Panama on the brink. The pulse has turned into a nationalistic claim and now foreign companies are being accused of misbehaving in Panama.
India: Taxation’s Fatal Neglect?
In poor and unequal India, the level, type, quality and sustainability of spending are vital issues to debate. But the obsession with spending has crowded out discussions on spending’s Siamese twin: revenues and, more specifically, taxation.
Iceland and capital controls: check the politics not just the economics
LONDON | By Sigrún Davíðsdóttir | Those who understood the Eurozone correctly were those who understood that politics mattered more than economics. It might very well be the same in Iceland: in order to understand the course of events regarding capital controls, foreign-owned ISK assets and the estates of the failed banks, politics might weigh more than the economics. And as in Europe the political weight might bode messy course.