How China Is Offering an Alternative to the IMF
China has been setting up currency swap lines with many countries. But is this an idea that is ahead of its time?
Read more...Category Archives: Japan
China and US: Stumbling into War?
China and the US are doing an awful lot of chest-poking, and if anything, it’s getting worse under Biden. Could this sparring lead to war?
Read more...Covid Baby Bust Has Governments Rattled
A falloff in baby production has capitalists very worried.
Read more...Disruption of Seaborne Trade in South East Asia: A Quantitative Analysis
Restrictions to shipping due to military sanctions could have large negative effects on economic welfare for countries all over the world, including oil exporters such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia
Read more...Brexit: HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME
Little Brexit motion and less progress as the clock runs.
Read more...Mauritius Oil Spill Tragedy: How and Why the MV Wakashio Ran Aground, and Aftermath
A mysterious course change, a birthday party, oil on the beaches, and a billion dollars in compensation (maybe).
Read more...Peter Kuznick: Why Did Americans Accept Barbaric Slaughter of Japanese Civilians?
In 1939, Roosevelt decried targeting civilians as “inhuman barbarism”. In 1945, the U.S. firebombed Japanese cities and dropped nuclear bombs.
Read more...Brexit and Inertia
Things have changed very little on the Brexit front, which is not good.
Read more...Coronavirus: Go Forth and Multiply
An ugly take on the coronavirus.
Read more...Why US Hostility Towards Chinese Tech Groups Feels Like Déjà Vu
US reactions to Chinese competitive threats are an awful lot like the ones to Japan of the 1980s, but the US now has a lot less leverage.
Read more...Wolf Richter: World Trade Skids for First Time Since Financial Crisis
Exports by China, Japan, and Eurozone under pressure — in part because of globally weak demand for new vehicles, which transcends the trade war.
Read more...Does Japan Do MMT?
In case you had any doubts, Japan is not following MMT economic policy prescriptions.
Read more...Rethinking Free Trade Agreements in Uncertain Times
Jomo Kwame Sundaram makes the case against the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, a free trade agreement that went into effect at the end of 2018, for six of its eleven member countries.
Read more...Plastic Watch: Recycling Woes
Although recycling is far from a viable solution to the world’s plastic problem, even these inadequate efforts are lacking, as press accounts from last week of corruption in the UK recycling industry, and Japan’s lag in implementing even the limited plastic reduction measures undertaken elsewhere reveal.
Read more...First Set of High Seas Treaty Negotiations Concludes in New York
The first set of of four negotiating sessions to produce a UN treaty on the high seas by 2020 concluded last week in New York; this would extend the existing law of the sea framework beyond each nation’s territorial waters.
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