MSI

That’s the reaction I got in late 1980s from one of my Wall Street contacts. Armed with a reasonably good knowledge of economics, money and banking theory and some common sense, I argued that the U.S. Federal Reserve System (the Fed) had no reason to cut interest rates to please Wall Street trader...

A badly mismanaged U.S. economy is now going through a cyclical adjustment marked by an extremely expansionary fiscal policy, price rigidities and trade flows in a world split along increasingly bellicose security fault lines. That is the general setting in which the policy making committee of the A...

None of the currently active war theaters is nearing a peaceful conclusion. Sadly, they are becoming intractably expanding bloodbaths or uncompromising fields of confrontation. It has been decades now that the Middle East war ceased to be synonymous with Arab-Israeli fighting. The Iran-Iraq war in t...

The role of the dollar as a linchpin of the international monetary system is one of the most debated issues in the post-WWII global economy. Agreements on world trade and finance, adopted at Bretton Woods in July 1944, quickly proved inadequate. The system of fixed (but adjustable) exchange rates, a...

Barring major security problems in the weeks and months ahead, jobs and incomes will stay at the top of people’s concerns in the run-up to November 5 elections. Opinion polls show that those two economic variables, and the quality of economic management, have already determined the voters’ elect...

Caught up in a war with Russia, and in increasing trade frictions with China, the current European leaders have ignored deteriorating economies at their own peril. Policies to restore the E.U.’s peace and security are nowhere in sight, and the broadening trade conflicts with China could easily get...

During an Asian forum last week American and Chinese defense ministers met to discuss their strategic and security problems. And with no progress on any of the issues, they decided to continue to talk and establish contacts between their field commanders to prevent “misunderstandings” and "misca...

With a focus on Global South, the war in Central Europe, trade embargoes and sanctions, the Group of Seven -- the West’s key economic and political forum -- will deliberate in its standard framework of “liberal democracies vs. autocracies” during the meeting in Italy on June 13 – 15, 2024. P...

The wars in Europe and in the Middle East, ongoing military confrontations in the South China Sea and nuclear capable ballistic missile firings on the Korean Peninsula are all part of a global fight between West’s “liberal democracies” and “autocratic societies.” There is nothing “hybrid...

Widespread market comments that a 5.3 percentage points interest rate differential favoring dollar assets is the main source of the yen’s intractable weakness is a typical simplification of Japan’s enduring and deep-rooted economic problems. The first symptoms of Japan’s deteriorating economic...