Globalization

is the amount of exposition of French banks to European countries’ private and public debt. They own for instance $106 billion of Italian public debt (which is six times higher…

The Coalition for Tax Competition asked members of the US Congress to cut the $100 million taxpayer subsidy to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Citing the OECD’s record as an opponent of tax competition, the letter released by the coaltion argues that US taxpayers should not be funding an organization which works against their interests by promoting a statist agenda.

This article first appeared in the Wall Street Journal

Markets always make good scapegoats. When they do well, they are populated by profiteers. When they do badly, they are accused of causing trouble for everyone else.The denizens of the Dow, Nasdaq, CAC and DAX floors may be speculators and myopics. Yet it’s hard to find even the most reckless private participant who behaves as though his credit is limitless.

Standard&Poor’s, one of the three major credit rating agencies downgraded on Friday the USA credit rating, previously noted AAA, the highest possible level. The new rating AA+ is translating the worry of experts about the sustainability of US public finances, in the context of ever increasing public spending and public debt above $14.3 trillion. The debt deal signed by the Congress is projecting savings of $1.2 trillion, which S&P estimates to be insufficient.

After a huge transfer-loan of €110 billion last year, Greece is once again pending on EU-IMF charity in order to avoid default, or at least, to benefit from a smooth default (assuming such a thing exists). Meanwhile, the Greek economy is paralyzed and tensions grow inside Greece as well as in other EU member states.

Portugal has undergone a huge change. There is a completely new political leadership: younger, better prepared, and much more open to the civil society. But even this “right wing” government lack the theory to understand the causes of the crisis Portugal currently faces, and thus seem unable to deliver real change.

More than 100 member countries representatives participated in the annual meeting of the Global Tax Forum in Bermuda. The Global Forum is charged with the monitoring and peer review of the implementation of the standards of transparency and exchange of information for tax purposes. It became notorious with the publication three years ago of grey and black lists of alleged “tax havens”.

Because the music stopped.

As Thatcher said, “They [socialists] always run out of other people’s money”. Portugal is now a perfect study case for this golden rule, with its quadruple-crisis.

This would be the annual interest on the USA public debt in 2021, according to the estimations made by the economist Veronique de Rugy. This number is nearly triple from…

When reflecting on the causes of the current economic and financial crisis, the huge upsurge in private debt is one of the most cited reasons. Some people insist on blaming the private sector for this. According to them, the sustainability of its behavior has been clearly put into question by the recent events. But, what lies behind this exorbitant private indebtedness? This article is focusing on the Spanish case, with some references to the United States.