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Economics

A U.S. Retreat on Global Trade Will Not Lead to a Shift in Power

16 December 2016

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MICHAEL PETTIS Rejecting the Trans-Pacific Partnership should not mean the rejection altogether by Washington of the very idea of a stable, rules-based trading system. The world is better off with such a regime. The very first on the list of executive actions that his administration would implement [read more]

Mined-out cities: the true cost of coal

10 December 2016

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by Stam Lee – Who travelled across China photographing mining areas, his images of scarred landscapes reveal the environmental debt left by China’s coal boom Many Chinese cities were founded on coal but are now being ruined by it. Forty years of rapid economic growth in China has driven a [read more]

China: Choosing More Debt, More Unemployment, Or Transfers

20 November 2016

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Michael Pettis China’s success will depend Beijing’s ability to centralize power, to begin to sell off government assets, to rein in credit growth, and to accept much lower GDP growth rates. SUMMARY I have often written in this blog and elsewhere about the three policy choices Beijing faces as [read more]

The Influence of Corporations on the Global Economic System

21 October 2016

Large corporations are often vehicles for expressing the opinions and supporting the interests of their owners and senior executives. Although they are a key part of the operation of the global economic system, and have a legitimate interest in ensuring that legislation and government policy does [read more]

The Problem of Financial Imbalances

19 October 2016

In addition to the weakness of self-equilibrating mechanisms within the global monetary system, there is an arguably even more serious problem with underlying financial, trade and debt imbalances. In the words of the BIS, “Historically high debt levels and signs of financial imbalances point to [read more]

Crony Capitalism

19 October 2016

Crony capitalism is a term used where corporations have corrupt relationships with government officials and politicians in order to obtain an undue advantage over competitors, or to take over public assets for nominal or unfair prices. It has been frequently used to describe the form of capitalism [read more]

Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World

19 October 2016

In his book, “Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World”, Raghuram G. Rajan identified two main fault lines in the global economy. Firstly, the willingness to supply credit to those who had not benefitted from rising GDP. He says, “the political response to rising [read more]

Global Corporations and their relationship to States

11 October 2016

Students of international affairs, familiar with the Westphalian system, have been taught to see states as the paramount and only significant actors in the world, this is, however, not the case. Corporations, who operate globally, and with few restrictions, are also major players, in many cases [read more]
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