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In RealTime posts, PIIE senior staff and colleagues discuss the fast-moving economic news, financial developments, and public policy choices confronting the United States and the world.
On the fringes of the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos last week, there was plenty of substantive discussion—including about the dangers posed by our "too big to fail" and/or "too big to save" banks, the consequences of widening inequality (reinforced by persistent unemployment in some countries), and why the jobs picture in the United [...]
The Spanish government has finally begun to address the key source of financial market uncertainty surrounding its banking system, the wobbly cajas savings banks [pdf]. All Spanish banks must immediately apply the new Basel III core capital definition, and raise such capital to at least 8 percent (and more if the caja is unlisted) by [...]
Marcus Noland, coauthor of the new book Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea, is launching a new blog devoted to the topic of North Korea. In this blog, Noland and his coauthor Stephan Haggard will report on developments that they believe are germane to issues facing North Korea, as well as the larger [...]
My posting last week on China’s new purchasing power parity (PPP)-based estimates has elicited a number of questions. One theme was: What would my revisions imply for the GDP estimates of other countries? I have looked into this. I don’t intend to provide estimates for other countries, which analysts can do based on the methodology [...]
The overthrow of Tunisia’s longstanding Ben Ali dictatorship, sparked when 26-year-old vendor Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest after his business was confiscated for lack of approved documents, has led many to wonder if these events may be a harbinger of the region’s future. Lost in the descriptions of Tunisia’s disaffected youth is [...]
One of the biggest questions of the coming decade is whether global economic and financial integration will continue or go into reverse as the consequences of the financial crisis unfold. Much public discussion focuses on trade and capital controls, but the outlook for foreign direct investment, including cross-border corporate acquisitions, is just as important. In [...]
When the presidents of China and the United States meet next week in Washington, neither will likely be aware that, measured in terms of purchasing power, it is Hu Jintao not Barack Obama who represents the world’s largest economy. Some time in 2010, the Chinese economy overtook that of the United States. My calculations of [...]
“Monetary policy responsibility cannot substitute for government irresponsibility.” So said Jean-Claude Trichet in a speech on January 7. Few would probably disagree with that statement, at least initially. But doubts and dissent may arise about whether the European Central Bank (ECB) should cut its financial support for Portugal and force it into the arms of [...]
The New Year has brought the welcome development of a heavily oversubscribed issuance of €5 billion five-year bonds by the European Financial Stabilization Mechanism, which was created last year to deal with the spreading financial crisis in Europe. While it is obviously good news for European Union governments that their newly created "crisis fighting tools" [...]