Tag Archives: International

UK Recovery: Sustainable Or Another Housing Bubble?

Relying on ever-rising house prices pushing home values up via artificially cheap lending creates only the illusion of growth – Ros Altmann

As you know, I have lived in London for ten years. The United Kingdom, throughout the Gordon Brown years, was the Keynesian stimulus experiment that the advocates inflation and devaluation always ‘forget’. They talk a lot about Abenomics and Obama but forget the stimulus+inflation-led economic destruction of the early 2000s, and the hole in public finances it caused. A hole that the UK has not been able to dig itself out of, despite carrying out a brutal monetary stimulus policy where the Bank of England buys nearly 70% of the public debt issued. Continue reading UK Recovery: Sustainable Or Another Housing Bubble?

The Debt Ceiling … And Why It Matters This Time

Our country is headed toward a ‘fiscal cliff.’ The bad news: We elected a guy whose campaign slogan was ‘Forward’ – Jay LenoSee my intervention on CNBC about the matter here: http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?play=1&video=3000205718 and http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?play=1&video=3000205434 and on the BBC here. Continue reading The Debt Ceiling … And Why It Matters This Time

More Merkel, Better Europe

“However the Germans vote on 22 September, Berlin’s attitude to the EU is not going to change much” – Charles Grant

Two weeks ago, Angela Merkel and Peer Steinbrück , leading candidates for German Chancellor,  held an election debate on TV. It was a quiet event, without fanfare or big accusations. There were no negative comments to the policies of budget cuts, rather the opposite. Commenting this with German friends, they told me: “The obsession with the so-called austerity is a problem in other countries, here people understand that budgets must be balanced”. Continue reading More Merkel, Better Europe