The International Monetary Fund has issued its External Sector Report for 2017, and among its key findings: “Global current account imbalances were broadly unchanged in 2016…” The U,S. continues to record the largest deficit, $451.7 billion, which is equal in value to 2.4% of U.S. GDP. The continuing deficits contribute to the increase in the […]
After a two and a half year political impasse, Lebanon now has a new government. And after 12 years without a budget Lebanon’s government led by new Prime Minister Saad also has a $15.8 billion budget What is not clear is whether or not the new government will at least try to create a new […]
Bad Numbers Today, there are over $3 trillion in stressed loan assets, compared to around $1 trillion of US sub-prime loans which was the catalyst for the 2008/2009 crisis. The World Bank estimates the ratio of non-performing loans (“NPLs”) to total gross loans is comparable the 2009 levels of 4.2% in 2009. Several loci of […]
“The ghost of John Maynard Keynes…has returned to haunt us”, commented Martin Wolf (2008) in the wake of the global financial crisis, suggesting that the lessons from the father of macroeconomics were the best way to understand the crisis and to return the world economy to health. In fact, the severity of the crisis […]
photo: Mark Nelson Leif Rosenberger: Former Professor of Economics, US Army War College & Former Chief Economist at CENTCOM and PACOM Back in the 1970s, Uganda was one of the worst run economies in the world. Uganda suffered through a lost decade when Idi Amin was in power in the 1970s. Thankfully, Uganda’s economic performance dramatically […]
New pragmatism is an original, paradigmatic and heterodox theoretical concept within the field of economic science, which attempts to address current civilizational challenges and factors that will determine the future functioning of economic systems. It strives to advance economic theory in a direction that allows a more in-depth and accurate cognition of the economic […]
Major changes in oil production have transformed the US from a major importer to a major producer and sometime exporter of oil. The market power of OPEC and its non-member collaborators has been weakened (Libya and Nigeria have been exempted from current quotas). In addition to new sources of oil production, we are now hearing […]
The world economy – and emerging market and developing economies in particular – display a gap between infrastructure needs and its finance (Canuto, 2014). On the one hand, infrastructure investment has fallen far short of what would be necessary to support potential growth. On the other hand, abundant financial resources in world markets have been facing […]
Key takeaway – Despite declining reserves and increased interest rates, Turkey is unlikely to suffer a market-crash over the next 12 months. What happened? Since the July 2016 coup attempt, the reserves of the Central Bank of Turkey’s (CBRT) declined. Gross international reserves declined by 14 percent (by USD 14.5 bn, from USD 104.7bn to […]
Against all odds, and contrarily to a generalized gloomy scenario of the past years about the destiny of the European Union, the Euro area has surprisingly recorded a stronger than expected economic growth in the first semester of 2017 and a rather optimistic and reinvigorated political turnaround in favour of the EU. During this […]
