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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Trade Derangement Syndrome – on China & Currency Wars

25 Wednesday Jul 2018

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

≈ 1 Comment

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China, currency, currency manipulation, currency wars, Financial Times, Martin Wolf, Paola Subacchi, Project Syndicate, renminbi, Trade, Trump, yuan, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Trade issues’ ability to completely muddle the thinking of supposed experts has never been more prominently displayed than in this recent column, from a leading European economist, on China’s manipulated currency.

Writing for the Project Syndicate website (which bills itself as “the world’s opinion page”), Paola Subacchi insists that China is not likely to turn the recent slide in the value of its renminbi (also called the yuan) into an “’engineered’ competitive devaluation” because “a weak renminbi has more costs than benefits” for the People’s Republic.

Of course, the case for worrying about a Chinese drive to weaken its currency stems from fears that a cheaper renminbi/yuan would give Chinese goods wholly artificial price advantages over U.S. and other foreign counterparts in markets the world over. The result would be a big trade lift for the Chinese economy at the expense of its competitors — and for reasons that have nothing to do with either free trade or free markets.

Anyone pretending to know what Chinese leaders are really thinking about such vital economic (or other) matters is blowing smoke. But it’s nothing less than absurd to suppose that the considerations Subacchi cite for her China currency optimism are taken the slightest bit seriously in Beijing.

For example, the author argues that “by increasing import prices and bolstering export sectors, a weaker renminbi would undermine the Chinese government’s goal of shifting away from export-led growth and toward a model based on higher domestic consumption.” But although it’s true that Beijing has long talked about this goal, it’s highly doubtful that China’s are prioritizing these days – if they ever have.

After all, as made clear in this new column from the Financial Times‘ Martin Wolf, China in recent years has been relying on domestic purchases (especially investment spending) supercharged by official stimulus policies to keep growth at satisfactory levels. This shift, however, has scarcely been voluntary. The choice was essentially forced on China by the sharp downturn in global trade triggered by the last global financial crisis and recession, which pummeled foreign markets for Chinese products. The results, Wolf shows, have not been a healthily rebalanced Chinese economy, but one that’s growing more slowly, and whose growth is dangerously reliant on an explosion in the country’s indebtedness. Is it really plausible that China is seeking more of the same?

According to Subacchi, “a weaker renminbi could [also] invite renewed US complaints about currency manipulation.” President Trump has just revived this charge. But the Chinese so far seem to be counting on blunting the new U.S. trade offensive by imposing their own retaliatory tariffs on American products (especially from politically important states and Congressional districts), and thus prompting a decisive counterattack by vulnerable political and economic interests. A continuingly weakening renminbi/yuan would plainly help, too. 

Moreover, Subacchi herself clearly regards Trump-ian U.S. trade policies as a major mistake, describing them (as well as China’s currency policies) as “not good for anyone.” Yet for those renewed U.S. complaints about currency manipulation to matter to Beijing, they’d need to be followed up with a credible threat of tariff responses – and, if needed, actual levies. Is she therefore suggesting that playing trade hardball makes no sense unless the target is China? Maybe she’ll explain in her next article.

“Finally, and more crucially,” the author writes, “a weak renminbi at the same time that dollar-denominated assets become more attractive could cause China to suffer capital flight.” She’s correct  – but oddly overlooks Beijing’s option of tightening capital controls – a policy that’s not exactly unprecedented for Chinese leaders.

Subacchi does deserve praise for spotlighting major actual and potential weaknesses in China’s economic and financial position. Unfortunately, the response she says she favors to the prospect of a full-fledged Chinese-launched currency war – “the world should call its bluff” – is wishful thinking. For the world as a whole – which remains heavily dependent on growing by selling to America’s gargantuan, wide open market – has displayed much more interest in protecting this convenient, though dangerously unsustainable, arrangement from vigorous U.S. responses than in imposing any significant disciplines on China.

In other words, the odds remain high that unless the prospect of a China-launched currency war is met with unilateral – i.e., Trump-ian – American counter moves, it won’t be met at all.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Gathering Storm?

24 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

≈ 2 Comments

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Alan Greenspan, bottom line growth, bubbles, China, commodities, currency, currency wars, devaluation, emerging markets, executive compensation, Federal Reserve, Financial Crisis, free trade agreements, George W. Bush, infrastructure, interest rates, Janet Yellen, mergers and acquisitions, Obama, productivity, profits, quantitative easing, recovery, secular stagnation, stimulus, stock buybacks, stock markets, stocks, top line growth, Trade, valuations, yuan, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The wild swings of stock markets around the world today should caution anyone against reading too much into recent global financial turmoil. As should be obvious to everyone – but is so easy to forget – these stock market declines are anything but the first that have been seen, and they’re anything but the worst that have been seen. The same goes for the economic situation in China and elsewhere – which matters much more.

But although this clearly is no end-of-the-world moment or even close, the latest news is a warning that the dangerous weaknesses that plunged the world into genuinely terrifying financial crisis and then savage recession just seven years ago have only been papered over, and have begun worsening again. More seriously, the United States and the rest of the world look much less capable of resisting powerful downdrafts.

Just to review very quickly, as I see it, the last crisis resulted fundamentally not from failures to regulate Wall Street adequately, the housing bubble, or any largely financial conditions. These were simply symptoms of mounting weaknesses in America’s real economy stemming largely from disastrously shortsighted trade policies. Both major parties became so enamored with offshoring-friendly trade deals and other policies that they sent overseas a critical mass of the U.S. productive base, and therefore a critical mass of the income-earning opportunities available to middle- and working-class families.

The George W. Bush administration, the Congress, and the Federal Reserve under then-Chairman Alan Greenspan could have reversed or even slowed this trade policy approach in order to restore these crucial domestic sources of income- and wealth-creation. Instead, they decided to double down on the offshoring. But to enable consumers (who are after all voters) to preserve their living standards, they decided to create then-unprecedented amounts of easy money, which made possible substituting borrowings (typically based on the bubble-ized home prices) for inadequate paychecks. Until that bubble’s inevitable bursting, the results were widely praised as having produced an economy whose “fundamentals” were “strong.“

Once the crisis struck, the Fed and other major world central banks have sought to reestablish and preserve national and global economic momentum through yet greater money printing and thus credit-creation. National governments in the United States (during President Obama’s first year in office) and especially in China lent a big hand through stimulus programs aimed at creating new government-supported demand for goods and services, and therefore for workers.

Seven years later, the results are in, and it’s fair to say that they have produced growth and employment levels that keep lagging historical standards not only in the United States, but everywhere. In fact, largely because the Fed so quickly and energetically capitalized on its massive credit-creation powers, America is a conspicuous out-performer. But as I’ve also pointed out, the makeup of the U.S. economy still strongly resembles that of the housing- and consumption-heavy bubble decade, which is why a more compelling description of America’s situation is not “ho-hum recovery” but “secular stagnation.” This concept, popularized by former Clinton-era Treasury Secretary and Obama chief economic adviser Larry Summers, holds that the nation has lost so much productive oomph that it’s forced to rely on Fed-created bubbles for whatever growth it can muster – and thus to run the ongoing risks of bubble-bursting as well.

Something, though, has clearly changed in recent weeks. The one-word description is “China” but the real answer is of course much more complicated, and looks to be a function of a seemingly fatal flaw of global easy-money policies: They’ve fostered way too little productive, growth-boosting investment, and way too much mal-investment. The latter has barely kept growth in positive territory but that’s gifted Wall Street and executives at big publicly traded companies with huge windfalls thanks to a (so far) mutually reinforcing cycle of share buybacks and rising stock prices that has supercharged their largely stock price-based pay. Other uses for cash and credit that have seemed more tempting than servicing economically fragile and in many cases still-cautious American consumers included buying up other companies and, mainly for Wall Street, simply parking the money at the Fed, where big finance firms could earn a bit of interest on trillions of dollars for doing absolutely nothing.

But still other distorted investment choices have included so-called emerging markets. In those lower income countries, higher levels of risk brought attractive levels of return, but investors (and not just financiers) were also impressed with relatively high growth rates. And that’s where much of the latest round of troubles is rooted.

Several big and chronic weaknesses and vulnerabilities of these countries – including China – were largely overlooked. First, because incomes were comparatively low, these countries were never able to grow mainly by turning out goods and services for their own populations. Growing fast enough to spur significant economic progress required finding markets “where the money is,” which meant abroad generally and disproportionately in the United States. When growth in the United States merely kept slogging along, many of the new factories that were built with American consumers in mind began looking awfully risky.

Just as bad, many of these emerging market countries themselves got greedy. Their governments and central banks took advantage of low global interest rates by trying to juice extra growth and rising incomes by offering easy credit to their consumers, home-builders, and other businesses, too. But they weren’t able to borrow sufficiently in their own currencies, and many jumped at the chance to take on abundant dollar-denominated debt – including companies that could borrow on their own, without working directly through their governments. Moreover, many of these low-income countries (and some wealthy counterparts, like Australia and Canada) had gotten an added boost from China’s seemingly endless demand for their raw materials, which produced the lion’s share of their growth. But they failed to use earnings from the resulting high commodity prices to diversify their economies and take at least a few eggs out of that basket.

Lately, both China and the Federal Reserve have hit the emerging world with several punishing whammies. China itself continued to depend heavily on exports for its growth, and therefore started slowing itself as global demand continued disappointing. Its performance was additionally undermined by a decision to let permit the yuan to strengthen, in order to win it reserve currency status and greater long-term economic independence.

Beijing had also been trying to subsidize more growth led by domestic demand. But as with other third world countries, because Chinese incomes remain so low even after impressive pay raises, massive amounts of stimulus ranging from infrastructure and housing investment to (most recently) stock market manipulation did more to saddle that country with immense debts than to keep growth and job-creation at levels that were both economically acceptable, and politically essential – i.e., strong enough to keep the masses reasonably happy.

If official data is close to accurate (hardly a certainty), China’s growth rate is still world-class. But even its recent decline from previous blistering levels clearly has been enough to ravage global demand for fuels, industrial metals, and foodstuffs alike – and in turn the economic prospects of the commodity producers. Since the economic prospects of these erstwhile johnny-one-note high-riders began worsening so markedly, foreign investors began pulling money out, putting downward pressure on their currencies, and consequently on their ability to import – including from the United States. At the same time, China’s own recent yuan devaluation deepened this predicament – by further diminishing the PRC’s own purchasing power, and by reducing the price competitiveness of all the finished goods that the commodity producers and their more manufacturing-oriented third world counterparts needed to sell.

If anything, the Fed’s impact on the developing world has been still more destructive. Like the United States, much and even most of its recent growth has depended on artificially cheap credit. But unlike the United States, it can’t borrow in its own currencies. As a result, these countries are exposed to exchange-rate risk (created mainly by the rising dollar) as well as to interest rate risk (which can be created not only by the actual Fed interest rate hike that Chairman Janet Yellen and colleagues have been promising, but by a perception of impending hikes that reduces the third world’s creditworthiness and thus their access to affordable new money.

The real U.S. economy is more than capable of staying relatively unscathed by this global turmoil. For despite the best efforts of American leaders, it’s still less reliant on trade, foreign investment, and the well-being of the rest of the world than practically any other economy. U.S. stock markets, by contrast, could be in for greater trouble, which could be the single most important reason for their recent drop (keeping in mind that their levels are always determined by a great variety of long and short-term influences).

The reason? Among the major props for stocks during the current feeble U.S. recovery has been American companies’ remarkable ability to grow profits despite the real economy’s woes. As widely noted, much of this growth has been on the bottom line – resulting from greater efficiencies rather than better revenues. Human ingenuity’s power should never be underestimated, but by the same token, it’s hard to believe that infinite amounts of blood can be drawn from that stone. Indeed, faltering recent American productivity performance strongly indicates that diminishing returns are in store for these efforts. Emerging markets, with their historically high growth rates and gargantuan populations, have long been viewed as business’ best future hope for accelerated top line growth, and so far they’ve performed well enough to justify considerable confidence.

This latest set of emerging market troubles, including China’s, signals that this ace in the hole really isn’t – which understandably raises questions about whether current stock valuations can be sustained. As usual, please take all forecasting efforts, including mine, with a big boulder of salt. But it seems to me at least conceivable that, just as Wall Street has for years comforted itself by observing that “the stock market is not the economy,” unless Washington screws up royally, Main Street will start becoming grateful for this divide.

But that doesn’t mean that a healthy speed up in the recovery is in sight. Speculation has abounded lately that the Fed might not only postpone those interest rate hikes but need to launch another round of bond-buying – i.e. “quantitative easing.” Yet why a new influx of easy money would generate more sustainable growth than its predecessors isn’t at all apparent.  Washington could return to greatly increased deficit spending, but with so much of U.S. consumer and business demand being satisfied by imports, and with foreign currency devaluations likely to continue, the growth and employment benefits seem more certain than ever to leak overseas.  In principle, this new spending could be targeted on domestic infrastructure, but however popular this idea has been in Washington, it hasn’t yet been popular enough to produce enacted programs, and the intensifying presidential cycle could well turn into a new obstacle.

What about tariffs on imports, which could spur growth by cutting the trade deficit – and without budget-busting tax cuts or stimulus programs? As usual, they’re completely off the table. Indeed, new trade agreements, and therefore higher deficits and even slower growth, appear to be next on that front – though perhaps not until both Democrats and Republicans are safely past the next election.

That leaves fostering an unhealthy speed up in the recovery – kicking the can down the road yet again secular stagnation-style, for the usual unspecified reasons expecting meaningfully different results, and acting surprised when crisis clouds begin gathering anew.        

 

Making News: Podcast of New BBC Interview on China and Global Markets

24 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Making News

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Tags

BBC, China, China stock markets, currency, currency wars, devaluation, emerging markets, export-led growth, Federal Reserve, finance, interest rates, investing, Making News, monetary policy, recovery, Trade, Wall Street, yuan, ZIRP

I’m pleased to announce that I was interviewed on the BBC this morning on China’s economic and financial turmoil, and how it’s been shaking the world’s economy and financial markets.  Click on this link for the podcast.  My segment is titled “Global Markets React to China’s ‘Black Friday'” and yours truly comes in at about the 7 minute-50-seconds mark.

Moreover, even as we speak, I’m working on a more detailed analysis that I hope to post shortly.  Stay tuned!

Making News: Talking China Devaluation on Connecticut Radio This AM

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Making News

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China, currency, currency wars, devaluation, Financial Crisis, Making News, Trade, WATR-AM, yuan

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be appearing this morning on WATR-AM (Waterbury, Conn.) radio to talk about China’s de facto devaluation of its currency – which threatens the U.S. and global recoveries, and could hasten the eruption of Financial Crisis 2.0.  The segment is scheduled to begin at 11:10 AM EST, and if you’re interested, you need to listen live at this link – because WATR doesn’t do podcasts yet!

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: The Real Economics of Currency Manipulation

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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central banks, currency manipulation, currency wars, devaluation, exchange rates, fast track, Federal Reserve, Financial Times, Great Depression, John Plender, Obama, protectionism, QE, Robert Aliber, TPA, TPP, Trade, Trade Promotion Authority, Trans-Pacific Partnership, University of Chicago, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Since Congress is finished with its fight over fast track negotiating authority for President Obama, and the next big trade deal in the offing – the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – is still being negotiated, issues like foreign currency manipulation have virtually disappeared from the media.

That’s more than a shame, since the effects of China’s longstanding exchange-rate protectionism – which gives Chinese-made goods artificial price advantages in all global markets – still weigh on American manufacturing production and employment.  And let’s not forget that Mr. Obama and Congress’ Republican leadership successfully beat back efforts to include strong disciplines on manipulation in the TPP – even though prospective TPP member Japan looks like another huge manipulator.

Here’s hoping, though, that when these subjects return to the spotlight, decision-makers will read John Plender’s excellent post in yesterday’s Financial Times explaining why this predatory practice needs to be abolished – and not just for America’s sake.

Plender makes two main contributions to the heated currency manipulation debate. First, he explains that the main argument against curbing manipulation is a straw man. It doesn’t much matter whether national currencies weaken because the governments in question are explicitly seeking trade advantages or not. It’s true, as manipulation soft-liners note ad nauseam, that the recent spate of central bank monetary easing policies pursued all around the world generally has been bound to weaken their countries’ currencies. It’s also true that America’s own Federal Reserve has eased massively itself – though the dollar has remained strong over the long run partly because of its unique status as the world’s predominant currency, and partly because the U.S. economy has outperformed that of most other major powers lately.

But as Plender notes, the distortions to trade flows take place all the same. He could have added, as opposed to only suggesting, a point I keep making: Monetary easing by a trade- and export-led economy (like China’s or Japan’s) is much likelier to stem from trade-related concerns than easing by a consumption-led economy like the United States. (Other considerations let America off the hook, too.)

His second contribution: observing that the universally condemned currency devaluations that helped deepen the Great Depression were by no means all made to beggar trade partners. Yet as trade policy critics are constantly reminded, trade flows suffered anyway. In fact, Plender cites this stunning claim from University of Chicago economist Robert Aliber: measured in terms of the worldwide trade imbalances that have resulted, “today’s currency wars are more severe than those of the 1930s.”

Indeed, this is a great opportunity to revive another point I’ve made in the context of of the fast track/TPP currency manipulation debate: The devaluations of the 1930s and the economic and military calamities they brought closer taught the American and other architects of the post-World War II global economic order a seminal lesson: that such currency movements needed to be controlled in order to create and maintain a viable international trade system. Unless Mr. Obama and his fellow globalization cheerleaders now believe that this conviction was wrong, they need to make sure that U.S. policy helps end or severely punish manipulation, and finally treat genuinely free trade like a priority, not a talking point.

Following Up: Foreign Engines of Deflation

08 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Following Up

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China, Congress, currency, currency wars, deflation, devaluation, Election 2014, emerging markets, Financial Crisis, Following Up, Global Imbalances, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Obama, Republicans, The Economist, Trade, Trans-Pacific Partnership, won

If you think I’m worrying too much about new industrialization drives by India and Indonesia greatly strengthening deflationary forces that could further weaken an already feeble global economy, check out some new information from The Economist. It shows the powerful deflationary effect that’s already been generated by the industrialization of another third world population giant – China.

The magazine’s Buttonwood column reports research findings of a 70 percent correlation between Chinese producer prices and American consumer prices since 1995. That’s when the inevitable production- and job-offshoring effects of Clinton-era decisions to expand U.S.-China trade greatly began to kick in. And the China producer price index has been falling for 30 straight months. That’s the longest such tailspin since the late-1990s, the years of the Asian and third world financial crises.

This powerful relationship between China producer prices and U.S. consumer prices also confirms many other important critiques that have long been made by opponents of U.S. trade policies with China and the rest of the world.

For instance, it makes clear that despite endless claims that China is working hard to turn its economy into one led by domestic demand, it still relies heavily on exports for growth – especially to the United States. In the process, it further debunks the contention that integrating huge so-called emerging markets like China more tightly into the global economy will in the policy-relevant future turn into an unprecedented win-win for the entire world economy.

Trade expansion with these countries – which also included decisions to overlook their currency manipulation and other predatory trade policies – was supposed to create immense new sources of net new global demand that in turn would create equally immense new opportunities for producers and workers in first world countries like the United States to supply these new consumers. But because third world populations still remained way too poor to absorb a critical mass of their own production – much less production from high-income countries on a net basis — the emerging markets became bigger emerging net exporters than ever. Consequently, they drained demand from the world economy and growth from wealthier countries, and especially their workers.

The only way this global economic high wire act could be sustained was to extend unprecedented amounts of credit to consumers in America, in particular (the only economy that kept itself fully open to third world exports). The spending and debt explosion that resulted wound up imploding in 2007 and 2008, and produced the global financial and economic near-collapse whose damaging after-effects are still felt in spades more than half a decade later.

Finally (for now), it’s revealing that Buttonwood noted how these burgeoning deflationary forces are also being strengthened by Japan’s recent decision to speed up the weakening of the yen – which will put renewed pressure on China and other Asian net exporters who compete with Japan to respond in kind. He (she?) could have added that Korea has already let its won hit a nine-month low versus the dollar – and has announced that it’s willing to devalue further or respond otherwise.

The columnist drew the right conclusion: “Small wonder if governments decide it is every man for himself.” I just hope that he (she?) and his (her?) colleagues remember that the next time they’re thinking of writing yet another editorial lambasting even the feeblest trade response by an America better positioned to go it alone than any other economy.

Not that Buttonwood or any other cheerleaders for foolhardy, indiscriminate trade expansion seem to have much to worry about.  With his pursuit of new agreements with Korea and proposed deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Barack Obama has been faithfully following their advice throughout his presidency.   And of course this week’s midterm elections have presented him with eager new Republican partners in Congress.

 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: China Could Soon Follow the Trade Growth Recipe U.S. Urgently Needs

10 Friday Oct 2014

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

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China, currency manipulation, currency wars, devaluation, Financial Crisis, Global Imbalances, net exports, recovery, Trade, trade deficit, yuan, {What's Left of) Our Economy

For a long time, I’ve joined with many others in arguing that reducing the U.S. trade deficit is the nation’s best option for strengthening the still historically feeble economic recovery.

Shrinking the gap between American exports and imports quickens growth and therefore spurs hiring. Nearly all the gains come in the private sector. Similarly, trade deficit reduction would accomplish all these vital goals by strengthening U.S. national finances. Whereas tax cuts and/or more government spending can only increase the national debt (at least short term), trade deficit reduction actually reduces it, all else equal, by boosting the level of taxable economic activity.

Perhaps best of all, lower U.S. trade deficits will stabilize the global economy, by better aligning patterns of world production and consumption, and thus decreasing the debt-fueling worldwide imbalances that helped trigger the financial crisis – and could pave the way for another.

As its persistent protectionism shows, China doesn’t give a fig about global imbalances (though arguably a less crisis-prone world economy serves its interests, at least over time). But interestingly, savvy observers are increasingly speculating that Beijing will soon look to trade to boost its economy precisely because of growing financial worries.

China of course runs big surpluses in trade and in the broader current account (which includes financial flows). But Beijing reportedly is growing getting scared about threats on other financial fronts – including its local governments, its corporations, and the shadow banking sector. (Given how government at all levels still dominates Chinese economic activity, these debt dangers are even more intertwined than they often are in free-market – term used advisedly – economies.)

As a result, a widely followed London-based analyst – Charles Dumas – has pointed out that China can at least maintain adequate growth without relying even more heavily on these overheated growth engines by devaluing its currency and therefore further increasing its trade surplus. In his words, “”China needs to keep growth up while getting excessive investment down….The bridge to the desired result has to be greater net exports. There is nothing else.”

Because a weakening yuan could worsen fragile-enough growth elsewhere, Bloomberg View columnist William Pesek fears that a China devaluation could spark a round of worldwide currency wars and deepen the world’s economic predicament. My even bigger fear – other protectionist countries, like Japan and Korea, along with the struggling Eurozone – might enter the beggar-thy-neighbor business, too, but that ever-clueless U.S. leaders will keep looking the other way. The resulting jump in American deficits would bring a new, probably even greater, financial crisis that much closer.

Blogs I Follow

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(What’s Left Of) Our Economy

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Our So-Called Foreign Policy

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Those Stubborn Facts

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  • In the News
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The Snide World of Sports

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
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  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
  • Uncategorized

Guest Posts

  • (What's Left of) Our Economy
  • Following Up
  • Glad I Didn't Say That!
  • Golden Oldies
  • Guest Posts
  • Housekeeping
  • Housekeeping
  • Im-Politic
  • In the News
  • Making News
  • Our So-Called Foreign Policy
  • The Snide World of Sports
  • Those Stubborn Facts
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Current Thoughts on Trade

Terence P. Stewart

Protecting U.S. Workers

Marc to Market

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Alastair Winter

Chief Economist at Daniel Stewart & Co - Trying to make sense of Global Markets, Macroeconomics & Politics

Smaulgld

Real Estate + Economics + Gold + Silver

Reclaim the American Dream

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Mickey Kaus

Kausfiles

David Stockman's Contra Corner

Washington Decoded

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Upon Closer inspection

Keep America At Work

Sober Look

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Credit Writedowns

Finance, Economics and Markets

GubbmintCheese

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

VoxEU.org: Recent Articles

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

Michael Pettis' CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS

New Economic Populist

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

George Magnus

So Much Nonsense Out There, So Little Time....

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