Banking lobbyists must be dizzy right now. In the United States they face regulation from Senator Dodd’s Banking Committee and a draconian proposal on derivatives from Senator Blanche Lincoln’s Agriculture Committee. In Britain, each of the three parties contesting the current election has different ideas on how to regulate banks – but they’re all agreed […]

Commentators, including the egregious Ben Bernanke are increasingly claiming that the US is in the process of a V-shaped recovery from the Great Recession. Certainly first quarter GDP, to be announced next week, is likely to show a substantial bounce, albeit not quite the inventory-driven 5.6% annualized growth of the fourth quarter. Yet commentators should […]

The extraordinary rise in commodity prices, at the beginning of a global cyclical upswing, is beginning to reorder the pecking order of the world economy. Together with the advances made by China and India in the last decade, it is producing an entirely new world order, which many will find uncomfortable. In it, commodities, derided […]

The announcement this week that Japanese and Chinese steel companies were moving to three month contracts with suppliers of iron ore, abandoning the previous annual price negotiations, is significant in a number of ways. All of them however add up to higher global inflation and lower overall economic welfare.