Tag Archives: Europe

The neocon factor dramatically changes the interpretation of the Trump administration’s unilateralist international economic policy chatter. Donald Trump’s first one hundred days have revealed his inclination for unilateralism in international relations. That inclination reflects his opportunistic and bullying disposition, and it also fits well with his anti-globalization pose. Trump’s unilateralism has also spawned a dangerous waltz with [...]

Trumponomics: How Trump skillfully used anti-globalization as bait to cover up his extremely neoliberal switch. A key element of Trump’s political success has been his masquerade of being pro-worker, which includes posturing as being anti-globalization. However, his true economic interests are the exact opposite. That creates conflict between Trump’s political and economic interests. For political leaders [...]

A key element of Trump’s political success has been his masquerade of being pro-worker, which includes posturing as anti-globalization. However, his true economic interest is the exact opposite. That creates conflict between Trump’s political and economic interests. Understanding the calculus of that conflict is critical for understanding and predicting Trump’s economic policy, especially his international [...]

The euro zone (EZ) was created in January 1999. Its weak economic performance is significantly due to the euro’s neoliberal monetary architecture and the design of monetary policy. Those features undermine national political sovereignty and consign the EZ to severe economic under-performance, which in turn fosters political demands for exit from the euro. Escaping this [...]

This paper explores lock-in and lock-out via economic policy. It argues policy decisions may near-irrevocably change the economy’s structure, thereby changing its performance. That causes changed economic outcomes concerning distribution of wealth, income and power, which in turn induces locked-in changes in political outcomes. That is a different way of thinking about policy compared to [...]

In economic policy, timing isn’t everything, it’s the only thing. The euro zone crisis has been evolving for over seven years, making it difficult to time policy proposals. Now, the shock of Brexit has created a definitive political opportunity for reforming rather than patching the euro. With that in mind, I would like to revive [...]

NIRP is quickly becoming a consensus policy within the economics establishment. This paper argues that consensus is dangerously wrong, resting on flawed theory and flawed policy assessment. Regarding theory, NIRP draws on fallacious pre-Keynesian economic logic that asserts interest rate adjustment can ensure full employment. That fallacious logic has been augmented by ZLB economics which [...]

The science of genetics has been coming along by astonishing leaps and bounds in the last 10 years, and you can read some of the fascinating research findings in Gibbons (2014), Allentoft et al. (2015), Günther et al. (2015), Mathieson et al. (2015) and Hofmanová et al. (2016). Many of these studies are based on gene sequencing of ancient DNA in the remains of people who died thousands of years ago.In terms of its population movements and descent, the facts appear to be that modern Europeans...

At the moment the British Labour party is in the news with claims of anti-Semitism in its ranks. On the one hand, I don’t doubt that the modern Labour party has certain people in it like Livingstone or former members like the odious George Galloway who have a disgraceful and disgusting relationship with Islamists, and who have a one-sided and unfair bias against Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.But, despite all the hysteria, this is such an overblown issue. If one really wants to...

Is this the future of Europe? Now (apparently) people in Germany can’t even engage in rude political satire against a quasi-authoritarian head of a foreign state…[embedded content]And, of course, it has backfired already:[embedded content]