BERKELEY: There is no shortage of talk nowadays about Europe's deficits and the need to correct them. Critics point to governments' gaping budget deficits. They cite the southern European countries' chronic external deficits. They highlight the (...)
CAPE TOWN: At last, European leaders have revealed their top-secret plan for solving the euro's crisis. And it is — drum roll — a version of the “Tobin tax,” a levy on financial transactions first suggested in 1972 by the Nobel laureate economist (...)
BERKELEY: The euro crisis shows no signs of letting up. While 2011 was supposed to be the year when European leaders finally got a grip on events, the eurozone's problems went from bad to worse. What had been a Greek crisis became a southern (...)
BERKELEY: For more than a half-century, the US dollar has been not only America's currency, but the world's as well. It has been the dominant unit used in cross-border transactions and the principal asset held as reserves by central banks and (...)
BERKELEY: It should now be clear to even the most blinkered observer that the Greek economy is in desperate need of help. Unemployment is 16 percent and rising. Even after a year of excruciating spending cuts, the budget deficit still exceeds 10 (...)
BERKELEY: The dollar has had its ups and downs, but the downs have clearly dominated of late. The greenback has lost more than a quarter of its value against other currencies, adjusted for inflation, over the last decade. It is down by nearly 5 (...)
BERKELEY: Financial markets are increasingly certain that a Greek debt restructuring is coming, and European policymakers fear the worst. “In the worst case,” as Juergen Stark, a member of the European Central Bank board, has put it, “a debt (...)
BERKELEY: This is the season for international monetary conferences. In March, national leaders assembled in Nanjing, China, to speechify on exchange and interest rates. And, in early April, leading thinkers and former policymakers met in Bretton (...)
BERKELEY: With the world's rich countries still hung over from the financial crisis, the global economy has come to depend on emerging markets to drive growth. Increasingly, machinery exporters, energy suppliers, and raw-materials producers alike (...)
BERKELEY: A strictly economic interpretation of events in Tunisia and Egypt would be too simplistic — however tempting such an exercise is for an economist. That said, there is no question that the upheavals in both countries — and elsewhere in the (...)
BERKELEY: Complaints about the inflationary effects of American monetary policy are rampant, despite there being barely a hint of inflation in the United States. Rapidly growing catch-up economies are paddling furiously to avoid being dragged down (...)
BERKELEY: What once could be dismissed as simply a Greek crisis, or simply a Greek and Irish crisis, is now clearly a eurozone crisis. Resolving that crisis is both easier and more difficult than is commonly supposed.
The economics is really (...)
BERKELEY: In the United States, the scent of decline is in the air. Imperial overreach, political polarization, and a costly financial crisis are weighing on the economy. Some pundits now worry that America is about to succumb to the “British (...)
BERKELEY: Three years into the financial crisis, one might think that the world could put Great Depression analogies behind it. But they are back, and with more force than ever. Now the fear is that currency warfare, leading to tariffs and (...)
BERKELEY: The relationship between the International Monetary Fund and the G-20 is symbiotic but conflicted. Like a long-married couple who habitually bicker and fight, the two can't seem to live together — but they can't live apart, either.
The (...)
BEIJING: China is getting its exchange-rate adjustment whether it likes it or not. While Chinese officials continue to mull the right time to let the renminbi rise, manufacturing workers are voting with their feet — and their picket lines.
Honda (...)
BERKELEY: The last few weeks have been the most amazing — and important — period of the euro's 11-year existence. First came the Greek crisis, followed by the Greek bailout. When the crisis spread to Portugal and Spain, there was the $1 trillion (...)
BERKELEY: After a period of high tension between the United States and China, culminating earlier this month in rumblings of an all-out trade war, it is now evident that a change in Chinese exchange-rate policy is coming. China is finally prepared (...)
BERKELEY: The International Monetary Fund, many say, has had a good crisis. As recently as three years ago, many observers thought that the Fund had outlived its usefulness and should be closed down. Since then, it has intervened in Hungary, Latvia, (...)
BERKELEY: Europe is now moving ineluctably toward a bailout for Greece. There will be emergency financing. There will be conditions. There will be the obligatory promises by the government in Athens.
This will make it possible for the Greek (...)
BERKELEY: President Barack Obama has not had an easy first year economically. He inherited a financial system on the verge of collapse. He was bequeathed an economy in recession and an unemployment rate destined to rise. And he faced a Congress and (...)
BERKELEY: On Jan. 1, South Korea takes over the G-20 chairmanship from the United Kingdom. Korea is not the first emerging market to chair the G-20, but it is the first to do so since the global financial crisis. And it is the first to do so since (...)
BEIJING: China is making a big push to encourage greater international use of its currency, the renminbi. It has an agreement with Brazil to facilitate use of the two countries' currencies in bilateral trade transactions. It has signed renminbi swap (...)
BERKELEY: The blogosphere is abuzz with reports of the dollar's looming demise. The greenback has fallen against the euro by nearly 15% since the beginning of the summer. Central banks have reportedly slowed their accumulation of dollars in favor of (...)
BERKELEY: It is fitting that the upcoming G-20 summit is being held in Pittsburg, an old industrial center of an advanced industrial country, for the advanced countries have been allowed to set the agenda for strengthening financial systems. Other (...)