Posts Tagged ‘international’
I’ve commented earlier that many economic forecasts seem to assume reversion to the mean – here, meaning average economic growth over the last two decades. For a great example, go to the Wall Street Journal and admire the GDP growth rates projected for Q3 2009 through Q2 2010, marching happily up and to the right. [...]
In Guatemala, at least. Various commenters on this blog have, at one time or another, recommended pulling your money out of those “too big to fail” banks that are getting so much government support. In Guatemala, Jean Anleu Fernandez was arrested and jailed for sending this out on Twitter: First concrete action should be remove [...]
Yesterday I testified to the House Subcommittee on International Monetary Policy and Trade (part of the House Financial Services Committee). The hearing’s title was “Implications of the G-20 Leaders Summit for Low Income Countries and the Global Economy,” and the main topic was whether Congress should support an extra $100bn for the IMF that the Obama Administration [...]
Once upon a time there was a president named George. He liked to do things his own way, which annoyed some of his “friends” in Europe. But then a new president named Barack was elected, who not only promised to be nicer to his friends, but was actually very popular in most parts of the [...]
This is a theme that Simon in particularly has been sounding. Now, according to the Telegraph, a confidential European Commission memo confirms this. To review, the basic problems, relative to the U.S., are: Disproportionately large banking sectors (the Iceland problem) in some countries, such as the U.K. High exposure to U.S.-originated toxic assets (up to [...]
All the hubbub about the new Obama Administration and the probably-impending bank rescue plan has diverted my attention a bit from goings-on in the rest of the world. I decided to spend a little time checking in, thanks to the magic of the Internet. And things do not look so good. Japan, in what looks [...]
I will be taking Saturday through Monday off to spend some time with my family. Hopefully it will be a slow weekend on the economic front. In the meantime, The New York Times has some overview articles on a few topics we’ve raised recently: The role of Chinese savings in the bubble The collapse in [...]
Dani Rodrik has a short, clear post on (a) why countries are tempted to engage in protectionism during recessions and (b) why they shouldn’t. It only uses 1st-semester macroeconomics. The bottom line is that the preferred outcome is for all countries to engage in fiscal stimulus at the same time. The hitch is that most [...]
Even with all the chaos in the US economy these days, the G20 summit approaching this weekend is bringing the global financial system to the top of the agenda, at least for the few days. One of the issues of the past few weeks has been volatility in currency prices as (most) countries with overvalued [...]
Hard economic times have political consequences, many of them unfortunate. In Argentina, we’ve already seen the government nationalize the private pension system in what many believe to be a naked grab for cash with only a distant relationship to the rule of law. In Russia, a central government with a war chest of over $500 [...]
Those of you reading the news may be having trouble keeping all of this morning’s events straight. Here’s a quick summary: The UK announced specific plans to recapitalize three of its largest banks – RBS, HBOC, and Lloyds TSB – with up to 37 billion pounds of government money. Separately, Barclays announced plans to raise [...]
Or, yet another reason why the financial crisis matters … In Zimbabwe, site of some of the deepest suffering in the world today, Robert Mugabe reneged on a power-sharing deal with Morgan Tsvangirai and the opposition party. Sure, he might have done it anyway, but it’s a lot easier when the world’s attention is elsewhere [...]
Our latest analysis and proposals have been published by the Washington Post (print edition Sunday) in an article by Peter and Simon entitled “The Next World War? It Could Be Financial.” If the world’s leading financial powers cannot agree on a coordinated response, it could be “every nation for itself” – a repeat, on a [...]
The Center for Economic and Policy Research has rushed out, and I mean that in the best sense of the term, a survey of economists’ recommendations for the world’s economic policymakers and, specifically, for the meeting of G7 finance ministers this week. The economists who contributed to the 40-page report (once there, click on the [...]
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Many Countries Are Worse Off Than We Are
May 21, 2009 in Commentary
Tags: international
These are real GDP growth rates for Q1 over Q4, not annualized (like we do here in the U.S.), for the G7 and the Eurozone: Japan: -4.0% Germany: -3.8% Eurozone: -2.5% Italy: -2.4% U.K.: -1.9% U.S.: -1.6% France: -1.2% Figures are from Bloomberg. Canada seems to be doing better, but Bloomberg doesn’t have quarter-over-quarter rates.