MSI

To reassure Germans that the new European currency – the euro -- will be under Berlin’s control, Germany’s former finance minister Theo Waigel said at the time the euro was launched (January 1999) that “Der Euro Spricht Deutsch” (the euro speaks German). That was an arrogant swipe at fello...

That is the key – and unassailable – tenet of monetary theory. The corollary is that the fiscal policy’s long-run impact on economic activity is zero, or even negative. The rejoinder, offered by the British economist, John Maynard Keynes, the proponent of government spending (to fill the void ...

The global demand for the Japanese currency has been on a steady downward trend ever since Tokyo chose in 2012 to invigorate its export-driven economy with an unending avalanche of yen liquidity. Over the last nine years, the yen has lost 35.4% of its trade-weighted value. Nearly one-third of that e...

In the coming months, the global economic growth and employment creation will be driven by an exceptionally strong monetary and fiscal stimulation in the trans-Atlantic community. China will continue to be the main trade beneficiary of the turbo-charged Western economies. With an inflation rate of o...

Asia’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) -- the world’s latest and by far the largest free-trade area -- enters into force on January 1, 2022. It consists of the ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New...

Official claims of “benign” and reversible price inflation dynamics in the U.S. and in the euro area are vacuous debating points among financial markets and short-term forecasters at the monetary authorities in Washington and Frankfurt. For the time being, markets are gun-shy and following the W...

Major East Asian economies are sound, well balanced and advancing at steady and sustainable growth rates. The data for the third quarter of this year indicate that those economies are growing in the range of 1.2% and 4.9% set by Japan and China, with Indonesia and South Korea in the upper part of th...

The U.S. and euro area inflation rates are high and accelerating, leaving no room for complacent and implausible forecasts of temporary and reversible price pressures. The U.S. Federal Reserve has come around to the view that the annual consumer price increase of 6.2% last October (4.6% corrected fo...

Compared to America’s 12.4% of GDP budget deficit for the fiscal year 2021, the euro area’s narrowing budget gap to 6.9% of GDP in this year’s second quarter looks like a paragon of virtue. Indeed, something to cheer about, because the monetary union’s deficit was nearly halved over the prev...

Taiwan and the Ukraine are the most absurdly debated global casus belli. China does not need to invade its own province to protect the territorial integrity of internationally recognized One-China borders. Beijing has other means of doing that. And people irresponsibly and disingenuously egging on T...