The increasing divergence of the U.S. and EU economies, and the sluggish statistics coming out of the former, point to one inescapable conclusion: the U.S. policy mix, in fiscal, monetary and regulatory areas, has been uniquely bad. This is not simply a question of party or ideology: under the Democrat Clinton administration economic policy was […]

The British government’s announcement that it intends to force a change in indexing of private sector pensions from the Retail Price Index to the Consumer Price Index, thereby making British pension schemes sounder while depriving aged pensioners of 25% of their expected income is typical of an unpleasant recent trend. Governments are manipulating official statistics […]

There’s a new acronym for favored emerging markets – CIVETS. Coined again by Goldman Sachs’ Chief Economist Jim O’Neill (who invented the BRIC acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China in 2001) it stands for Colombia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, Turkey and South Africa. However the new acronym’s enthusiasts may have missed out on one thing: […]