MADRID | By J.P. Marín Arrese | Will the Sidney growth strategy fly? Germany and the ECB have voiced open scepticism on its merits. So long as growth continues to gain momentum, they is little chance surplus countries might revamp domestic demand in a co-ordinated effort for anchoring recovery. They will put into practice the well-seasoned “wait and see” strategy.
BEIJING | By Andy Xie | The fact that emerging market economies have not borrowed in foreign currencies means there’s a way out, and a soft landing will be helped if China keeps its currency stable.
NEW YORK | A guest post by Benjamin Cole via Historinhas |The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks “unit labor costs,” and back on February 6, they came out with their latest report. Usually I look for this report, but this time I missed it. The news? We are in deflation, when it comes to labor costs.
WASHINGTON |By Pablo Pardo | The “paradox of thrift” that Keynes made famous is something as simple as this: if everybody works and saves, nobody will prosper. Nobody can endlessly produce unless someone else buys those products. This is what the IMF has demanded of Spain—more consumption. And, in order to achieve it, more credit. That means more transparent banks and less dividends, but also an ECB with a more accommodative stance in monetary policy.
BEIJING | Op-ed by Wang Yong via Caixin | Private business owners in China are, out of desperation, breaking laws under a legal system that China must reform. An entrepreneur who has no basic rights guaranteed may fawn on political elites because this is probably the only way to guarantee personal safety. We could call that the private sector’s “crime of necessity.”
WASHINGTON | Via IMF’s Staff | Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors will meet on the Australina city on February 22-23. The IMF’ s staff has prepared a note as an anticipation of the event. The institution says the recovery is still weak and significant downside risks remain, thus further action and cooperation are needed to promote financial stability and robust economic upturn.
By David Denton via The Richter Scale | For anyone who was growing up in the 1970s there is a short list of things that one has to be concerned about: The music of The Bay City Rollers, the instant pudding – “angel delight”, playing rugby against the Welsh and inflation. Although the oil price shocks affected all industrialised economies inflation had a particularly severe impact on the UK, we quickly became known as the sick man of Europe.
MADRID | By Alex García and @ADe_Tocqueville
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.
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.