En 1991, le PIB nippon atteignait 80 % du PIB américain. Mais depuis vingt ans, le Japon n’en finit plus de payer les pots cassés de l’éclatement de sa bulle financière née à la fin des années 1980. Son économie est à l’arrêt, grippée par une population vieillissante, en diminution et dont le pouvoir d’achat stagne,… [Read more…]
August 12, 2010
The Mont Pélerin Society has announced the winners of its 2010 Hayek Essay Contest. The topic was: Examine whether authoritarian capitalism is a viable alternative to its Western liberal version, to promote long term economic growth and development. I am looking forward reading the three essays of the winners. An interesting article on the same… [Read more…]
August 5, 2010
L’Union européenne va octroyer 129 millions d’euros à la Syrie pour la réalisation d’un programme de réformes administratives, sociales et économiques, indique un communiqué diffusé mercredi par l’UE. More here.
July 14, 2010
But here’s the thing and here’s what I ask myself when I get discouraged. Let’s say I get to the end of my life and I look back and I never fought for any of my political values. I never wrote a ballot argument, I never wrote an op/ed in the Wall Street Journal, I never… [Read more…]
July 12, 2010
Sipping a lunchtime latte amid the gleaming skyscrapers of Istanbul’s financial district, banker Mehmet Canayaz debated whether the European Union should admit Turkey. The prognosis, he admitted, was not good: a dynamic, forward-looking region would end up shackled to an economy with severe debt, financial instability, and an uncompetitive workforce. Best for Turkey, perhaps, to steer… [Read more…]
July 12, 2010
European governments have solid public support, at least for now, for the spending cuts they are making in an effort to boost economic recovery, according to the latest Financial Times/Harris opinion poll. The survey also indicates that a majority of people in the European Union’s five largest countries disagree with the decision of governments to… [Read more…]
July 12, 2010
Un nouveau sondage d’opinion commandé par le Financial Times et Harris Interactive montre que les réductions des budgets nationaux sont populaires auprès des citoyens européens. Interrogés sur les mesures de réductions des dépenses des Etats européens récemment mises en place afin d’aider à long terme une reprise économique générale, 84% des Français, 71% des Espagnols,… [Read more…]
July 9, 2010
All of this matters because if a government stands behinds its banks, those banks need much less capital in order to be viable. Capital is a buffer against losses – it represents the shareholders’ wealth and as such “absorbs” the damage caused by bad loans or disastrous purchases of securities. If a bank’s capital falls… [Read more…]
July 9, 2010
It’s been almost three months since the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred, in the Mexican Gulf. You can find here 50 ways information design can help you understand the larger issue. I disagree with some of the graphs, but I love information design. The viewpoints of Gary Becker and Richard Posner about the Gulf oil leak.
July 8, 2010
The WSJ reports that the EU’s Committee of European Banking Supervisors (CEBS) has said that stress tests will cover 91 banks and 65 percent of the region’s banking assets. However, the FT notes that the CEBS did not reveal the nature of the stress tests for the banks’ sovereign debt holdings, the biggest area of concern for… [Read more…]
August 17, 2010
0