Conventionally, there are thought to be two routes to escaping from economic depression: pumping up the money supply and boosting public spending. Unfortunately, the Bush administration and the Fed have now carried both about as far as they will go, and last week’s economic statistics suggest the U.S. may still not have escaped depression’s clutches. […]

If not rapidly reversed, the World Trade Organisation talks’ collapse at Cancun last Sunday has long term effects far more significant than the short term ones. It could cause immense difficulties for the open, fast growing economies of Asia (“tigers”) while greatly alleviating the pressure for reform in the sluggish polities of continental Europe (“weasels.”)

The collapse of the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, treated with little attention by Wall Street and most of the media, has ominous overtones for the world economy, that make a rerun of the 1930s much more likely. Just as President Hoover ushered in the Great Depression by signing the notorious Smoot-Hawley Tariff in […]

It was Ross Perot who predicted a “giant sucking sound” of U.S. jobs heading southwards if Congress ratified the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. Sophisticated economists derided him. Well, listen up, guys — since the economy peaked in 2000, and more particularly in 2003, there has indeed been a “giant sucking sound” of […]

Iraq is now said to require tens of billions of dollars to restore it to economic health, beyond what is available from its slowly recovering oil exports. This figure is hugely in excess of aid budgets for much poorer countries in Africa, or for poorer, more populous countries such as Pakistan and Sri Lanka in […]