Economics & Global Affairs

200 Items

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

Get Ready for “Reverse Currency Wars”

| May 28, 2022

The US dollar is up 12% against the euro over the last year.  Having moved from 1.21 $/€ in May 2021 to 1.07 $/€ today, the exchange rate seems to be approaching one-to-one parity for the first time.  Europeans are not happy about it. If you think that prices for oil and other commodities are high now in terms of dollars, you should see what they look like in terms of euros.  Get ready for “reverse currency wars.”

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

El Salvador Exemplifies the Surrealism of Cryptocurrencies

| Sep. 26, 2021

El Salvador this month became the first country to adopt a cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, as legal tender.  One says “the first” as if there will be others.  But the idea is highly dubious.

I will admit, like many economists, that I fail to see what problem cryptocurrencies solve. They aren’t well designed to fulfill any of the classic functions of money — unit of account, store of value, or means of payment – in part because they are so extraordinarily volatile in price.  This volatility is not surprising, since they are backed neither by reserves nor by the reputation of a well-established institution, such as a government or even a private bank or other trusted corporation.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

What Three Economists Taught Us About Currency Arrangements

| Apr. 29, 2021

A generation of great international economists is passing from the scene.  Richard Cooper died on December 23. An American, he was teaching his classes at Harvard until the very end. Robert Mundell, passed away on April 4.  Originally Canadian, he was a winner of the Nobel Prize in economics.  And John Williamson, on April 11. Originally British, he had been the first scholar hired by the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

The Significance of Gold’s Record $2,000 Price

| Aug. 24, 2020

The price of gold reached an all-time record high of $2,000 per ounce this month.  Mainstream economic thinking has treated gold as a side-show since the world went off the gold standard. Nevertheless, the recent spiking in the price signals some important trends. It is not merely “sound and fury signifying nothing,” as sometimes seems true of financial markets.

There are three ready explanations for the historic increase in the price of gold: (i) monetary policy, (ii) risk, and (iii) a spreading desire for an alternative to the dollar as a safe haven.  Each of these explanations contains some truth.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

Six Practical Proposals for Progressive Tax Policy

Jan. 02, 2020

It was quite a surprise, three years ago, when Donald Trump won a majority in the US Electoral College, thus becoming the 45th president.  In the search for explanations, one immediately dominated:  Democrats had not been sufficiently aware of the problem of income inequality or had neglected to propose good solutions to it.

This is presumably the logic behind radical proposals coming from some of the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election. Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, has proposed an annual tax on the wealth of the wealthiest Americans (originally to be 2 % per year, but now up to 6 %).

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

RMB Reaches 7.0; US Names China a Manipulator

| Aug. 12, 2019

The US-China trade war heated up in the first week of August.  On August 1, Donald Trump abruptly announced plans to impose a 10 % tariff on the remaining $300 billion of imports from China that he had not already hit with earlier tariffs.   The Chinese authorities then allowed their currency, the renminbi (RMB), to fall in value below the highly visible line of 7.0 RMB/$.  The US Administration promptly reacted on August 5 by naming China a “currency manipulator” — the first time any country had been given that designation in 25 years.   Pundits declared a currency war, while investors responded by immediately sending stock markets down.

Blog Post - Views on the Economy and the World

Let’s Forget about 2% Inflation

| July 29, 2019

The Fed has some reasons for cutting interest rates at its meeting July 31, or subsequently if the US economy weakens. (And there are some good arguments on the other side as well, if growth remains as strong as it has been over the last year.)  But I find less persuasive one argument for easing: a perceived imperative to get inflation up to 2.0% or higher.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke set a 2% target for the US inflation rate in January 2012.  Some other countries had already done the same.  Japan followed suit a year later. Indeed Shinzo Abe’s successful accession to prime minister in late 2012 was predicated on the promise that monetary policy would raise inflation (Japan having previously suffered from negative inflation).