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I came across an article in the FT by Gideon Rachman which examined “How Reagan ruined conservatism.” It is an interesting piece which claims that traditional conservatives abhor populism and respect knowledge, while the Reagan Revolution ushered in a ‘new’ conservatism that appealed to those who love populism and disdain knowledge. All very interesting – [...]

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Bloomberg reports:
The Japanese government’s net assets in 2009 may have fallen below zero for the first time, the Nikkei newspaper reported, citing an unidentified government official. The result, which includes the central and regional governments, may add to pressure for the government to reduce bond sales, the paper said. Net assets of the central government [...]

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Marshall Auerback here with a post which I originally published at New Deal 2.0.
What is a fiscal crisis? When does deficit spending become “unsustainable”? Today, we can see net public spending rising (sharply as a percentage of GDP in some cases) as private spending has plummeted. Still, unemployment has skyrocketed. So whatever government spending has [...]

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Last week I showed you a chart from ProPublica in my post State unemployment insurance insolvency: 50 little Hoovers which demonstrated how states are being killed by the financial strains of unemployment insurance.  Well, this week ProPublica is back with more detail behind that chart – and, as you can imagine, it’s not exactly bullish.
They [...]

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If you have been watching the news flow in the last month, you would certainly have the impression that there are an increasing number of large layoffs – Sam’s Club being a notable one.  Before January, the jobless claims numbers pointed to a weak but somewhat improving layoff picture. But, there has been an alarming [...]

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A reader who invests in emerging markets sent me an interesting article from the South China Morning Post. Excerpts are below.
China’s economic stimulus programme has accelerated the already aggressive pace of urban development in the country. But while investment in construction is creating much-needed infrastructure in some cities, it is also adding to the [...]

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I re-posted my April 2009 post, “Barack Obama as Herbert Hoover” in response to the recent deficit reduction gimmick offered up by the Obama Administration and Marshall’s similarly titled “Barack Hoover Obama.” 
The point of my post was to make a non-ideological point – namely that Obama is early in the economic cycle, much earlier [...]

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I wrote this in April 2009 about the Federal Reserve’s machinations:
You should note that only the fiscal stimulus required legislative approval. All of the other ’stimulus’ has been done without Congressional approval and largely without Congressional oversight. These activities have been specifically designed to be opaque. The government’s claims of wanting to increase transparency ring [...]

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China has been very successful in maintaining GDP growth in the midst of one of the worst global downturns on record.  In 2009, the concern was how an export collapse would trigger slow growth and unemployment. But as 2010 begins, for the Chinese economy, it is overheating and inflation that most are worried about. Chinese [...]

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Bond king Bill Gross has gone populist. He starts his latest monthly investment outlook with an indictment of capitalism as practiced today in the United States that is a frontal assault on the corruption we are witnessing in Washington. As more and more revelations like the Geithner AIG cover-up surface, one must wonder if America [...]