Fiscal decentralisation does not lead to higher economic growth because economic growth is much more driven by factors other than taxes and spending, e.g. increases in technological progress and improved human capital.
Global capital markets pose the same kinds of problems that jet planes do. They are faster, more comfortable, and they get you where you are going better. But the crashes are much more spectacular.
Interest rates do not have to be identical across the whole euro area, but it is unacceptable if major differences arise from broken capital markets or concern about a euro area break-up.
The problem with Mr. Obama is that you get more regulation and it's a disincentive for businessmen to hire people. You probably also get higher taxes, so in terms of the economy, he is very negative in my view.
I am surprised with the reelection of Mr. Obama. The S&P is only down, like, 30 points. I would have thought that the market on his reelection should be down at least 50%.
I believe that the market is slowly waking up to the fact that the Federal Reserve is a clueless organization. They have no idea what they're doing. And so the confidence level of investors is diminishing, in my view.
It was easy for the Democrats to attack the wealthy fat cats of Wall Street, the elite, and the privileged people - to portray them as a profiteer of the system, which to some extent, they are. Not because they wanted to, but because Mr. Bernanke ena...
If the Chinese bubble bursts one day, which inevitably will happen - maybe not tomorrow, maybe in three months, maybe in three years - when it happens, it will have devastating consequences for the global economy.
Nobody at CNBC owns gold. Nobody at Bloomberg owns gold. Gold is being constantly talked down by the media, and Fed officials, and economists, who also don't own any gold. They're all stocked up in equities.
After all, an overvalued dollar gives us the ability to buy foreign goods at lower prices. And the existing volume of exports brings more yen and euros than they would if the dollar were more competitive.
Even if the dollar does decline during the coming months, the delays in the response of exports and imports to the more competitive dollar will mean that the increase in aggregate demand from this source may not happen for a year or more.
Thirty years ago, many economists argued that inflation was a kind of minor inconvenience and that the cost of reducing inflation was too high a price to pay. No one would make those arguments today.
Everyone recognizes that's a joke because obviously the number and shape of the pieces doesn't affect the size of the pizza. And similarly, the stocks, bonds, warrants, etc., issued don't affect the aggregate value of the firm.
Sugary drinks are blamed for increasing the rates of chronic disease and obesity in America. Yet efforts to reduce their consumption through taxes or other measures have gone nowhere. The beverage industry has spent millions defeating them.
What are called 'public schools' in many of America's wealthy communities aren't really 'public' at all. In effect, they're private schools, whose tuition is hidden away in the purchase price of upscale homes there, and in the corresponding property ...
As long as the big banks are allowed to remain big, their political leverage over Washington will remain big. And as long as their political leverage remains big, the taxpayer and economic tab for the next mess they create will be big.
Tax laws favor capital over labor, giving capital gains a lower rate than ordinary income. The rich get humongous mortgage interest deductions while renters get no deduction at all.
You might say those who can't repay their student debts shouldn't have borrowed in the first place. But they had no way of knowing just how bad the jobs market would become.
We already have an annual wealth tax on homes, the major asset of the middle class. It's called the property tax. Why not a small annual tax on the value of stocks and bonds, the major assets of the wealthy?
In America, the problems of poverty and low income, particularly for minorities, are disproportionately focused in the inner cities. Shining a spotlight on the businesses growing in these communities is proof that any community has the potential for ...
A bank needs models to measure risk. The problem, however, is that any one bank can measure its risk, but it also has to know what the risk taken by other banks in the system happens to be at any particular moment.
