The official sick man list of Europe has long been the PIIGS, or if you prefer, the GIPSI: Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy, Portugal. As the Cyprus restructuring drama has moved into high gear, it’s obscured news of a serious deterioration in the French economy and the weakened condition of Slovenia, which has a population and GDP roughly 1.5 times as large as that of Cyprus.
Read more...Even though we were keen about how voter repudiation of austerity in the Italian elections last week was throwing a wrench in the Troika’s austerity plans, we also warned, based on the example of Greece, that they’d try to neutralize the results. That effort is already underway.
Read more...Yves here. This is an important piece, in that it bucks conventional wisdom about growth and economic development in several ways.
Read more...“Paradox” is what the New York Times called France’s ability to attract more foreign investment than any country other than China and the US. A paradox because it shouldn’t. Investors should be scared off by labor laws, tax rates, the cost of labor, and mud-wrestling bouts over nationalizing some industrial plants. But turns out, multinational corporations pay practically no income taxes in France. And it has reached the boiling point.
Read more...NC readers can find some of the background on Nikki Turner’s story here. 18 months later, five years after her own business was destroyed, and a full decade after the very beginning of the HBOS fraud story, she is still waiting for the police investigation to lead to a prosecution. Mrs Turner’s open letter was […]
Read more...More about a possible link between bankrupt Irish ex-billionaire Sean Quinn’s asset hiding activities and the Taylor family’s company registration businesses (GT Group and successors)
Read more...The GT Global sham company network may be far bigger than you ever imagined.
Read more...You have to give a fund manager points for admitting to having a “history of contentious posturing.” Hugh You have to give a fund manager points for admitting to having a “history of contentious posturing.” Hugh Hendry’s also a reformed gold bug, which shows an unusual flexibility of thinking (once people join the gold cult, they seldom leave). Even if you don’t necessarily agree, his talk will serve as a useful grist for thought (hat tip Ian Fraser). Hendry discusses the end of an broadly adopted national strategy, mercantilism, and what he sees as the implications.
Read more...This Aljazeera video seeks to understand how Germans and Greeks view each other in light of the way the Trokia is breaking Greece as an example to other periphery countries (yes, Greece would have had adjustment problems regardless, but they are being made far worse by the measures taken to avoid exposing the insolvency of French and German banks). It covers how the crisis has rekindled lingering hostilities. It also sheds new light on the pre-crisis economic relationship between Germany and Greece, including corrupt deals between the Greek government and German arms-makers. It also treats austerian thinking with more dignity than it deserves, but that is a secondary theme of this show.
Read more...Basel III’s getting nowhere in the US.
Read more...Defenders of the Obama Administration’s indifference to high levels of unemployment often claim the problem isn’t readily remedied because the US suffers from “structural unemployment”. That’s really wonkese for blaming the victim. No sirreebob, the problem isn’t that there aren’t enough jobs, but that the workers are no damned good, as in they don’t have the right skills for our new super duper information based economy! In mainstream media outlets, claims like this are usually followed by a business owner saying there clearly aren’t enough skilled employees, he can’t hire any good machinists for $13 an hour. Generally speaking, Mr. Complaining Boss is offering below the going rate, but why let pesky details spoil a good narrative?
You don’t have to look hard to find evidence against this argument.
Read more...One of the reasons the public knows little about economics is that most economists are lousy speakers. Part of that is their reliance on jargon, which is often shamanistic, designed to obscure rather than communicate. But the other reason is that a lot of economists don’t bother to try to be engaging.
The remarks by Yanis Varoufakis and Marshall Auerback are informative and lively, if ultimately pretty grim. The comments at YouTube are extremely positive.
Read more...Anyone who has heard of, or better yet, read Nicholas Shaxson’s book Treasure Islands knows how large and powerful the world of “offshore” finance is. The public tends to think of banks in the Switzerland or the Caymans or the Isle of Man, but these are merely the outposts of larger networks. Shaxson contends that the UK was the historical top dog in the murky world of tax avoidance but the US is now the leader.
This Aljazeera show gives a small window into the nitty gritty of how this industry helps corrupt African leaders loot their countries. The journalists show how trivial it is to find facilitators and to set up the companies that allow money to be moved across borders with the identity of the instigator well hidden.
Read more...In pursuing its dream, the EU has created a ballooning superstructure of governance manned by 41,000 bureaucrats and mostly unelected politicians. In 2011, they spent €129 billion of taxpayer money. But now, the European Court of Auditors released its audit report for that year—a damning document that outlines how up to 4.8% of the EU budget seeped through the cracks and disappeared.
Read more...Tonight’s Financial Times has a eye-popping story, that the survival of Sharp, one of Japan’s top consumer products manufacturers, is in doubt:
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