By Benjamin Cole via Historinhas | In one of the more inexplicable political dementias of our time, the modern-day Republican Party has become fixated on inflation, and peevishly infatuated with tight-money policies—when not blubbering about gold.
An inside look at the lives of refugees and internally displaced persons in Iraqi Kurdistan. The region is thought to be hosting approximately 1.4 million internally displaced persons (IDP) and refugees. This number is expected to rise due to ongoing instability in Syrian Kurdistan and Iraq’s Nineveh province, especially with escalating violence in areas surrounding Mosul, Iraq‘s second largest city. The sudden occupation of Mosul by Islamic State (IS) militants in early June forced tens of thousands of ethnic and religious minorities to seek refuge in Iraq’s Kurdish region, as they fled execution, sexual enslavement and cultural elimination.
By Kyohei Morita, Yuichiro Nagai, James Barber, and the CFA at Barclays | The BoJ shocked the markets with further easing on Halloween. The actual effect on the economy will likely be less direct. The weaker JPY and lower real interest rates have not boosted export volumes and private capex since the start of QQE, and this may not change in the near future. However, consumer spending could draw support from wealth effects and higher wages linked to stronger exporter profits under JPY depreciation
MADRID | By Sean Duffy and Ana Fuentes | Growth is stagnant, sanctions are biting, and Russian investors are getting the cold-shoulder on international markets. So where does the country go from here? The Corner wanted to get a glimpse at market conditions on the ground and the overall sentiment within the country.
We spoke to Alexander Pechersky, a managing partner from ALT R&C, a firm specialising in advice to investors in the Russian market. In a frank interview, he cautions against placing too much stock in the effects on sanctions, noting that the economy was a mess to begin with.
SAO PAOLO | By Marcus Nunes via Historinhas | Before it was Peter Coy with John Maynard Keynes Is the Economist the World Needs Now. Now it´s Anatole Kaletsky with The takeaway from six years of economic troubles? Keynes was right: The main lesson is that government decisions on taxes and public spending have turned out to be more important as drivers of economic activity than the monetary experiments with zero interest rates and quantitative easing that have dominated media and market attention.
BEIJING | By Yang Hengjun via Caixin | Leaders in China should beware of reports and views that are sanitized so as not to offend because they will lead to distorted decision-making.
By Richard N. Cooper via Caixin | There is a widespread impression both inside China and out that after the vigorous economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, moving away from central planning and state control to greater emphasis on markets, the reform process stopped, or even reversed, during the 2002-2012 period. This view was perhaps reinforced by the emphasis in the third plenum of the Communist Party’s 18th Central Committee in November 2013 on the need to move further toward less guidance from the state and greater reliance on market prices to allocate resources.
MADRID | The Corner | As expected, the Fed confirmed the end of its QE3, although the announcement was slightly more restrictive. According to experts at Link Securitites, “while the decision shows that US economic conditions have improved (especially the labour market) and inflation remains at low levels, the message tone was more hawkish.”
MADRID | The Corner | Showing its confidence in the US economic recovery and the jobs market, the Fed announced it will put an end to its bond purchases scheme before the end of this week, the central bank announced after its FOMC two-days meeting on Thursday. Short-term interest rates will remain near zero for a “considerable time”.
SAO PAULO | By Benjamin Cole via Historinhas | No, I do not have dense pages of calculus for the reader, purporting that QE would be ruin or divine salvation, or that minor deflation is the theoretical apex of an economic model.