Trans-Pacific Partnership outside WTO and without China

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has failed. In December, the Doha Round is turning ten years old, with nothing to celebrate[i]. Formal negotiations of the Round expired in 2005, without any agreement, and informal negotiations stalled in 2008. Indications...

Revolutions are Revolting

Revolutions are rarely what they appear to be. There was precious little Russian participation in the Russian Revolution. Let’s instead call it what it was; the hijacking of a nation by mostly non-Russian armed insurrectionists bankrolled by Wall Street....

Argentina: The vulture funds

In 2002, Anne Krueger, First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), floated the idea that countries can go bust, advanced her opinion about a possible international mechanism of sovereign debt restructuring, and when considering...

Don’t Panic, Don’t Panic Just Yet

Channel 4 TV was not irresponsible when it set out a ‘what if’ scenario should the collapse of the euro in an EU member state trigger a chain reaction leading to the currency’s collapse. Certainly it is speculative but that is healthy. Speculation...

Euro crisis: It is time for European debt restructuring. Will Europe dare to undertake it?

Euro-zone weights a new plan to face the crisis, which will be discussed during the Brussels European Summit, and for which Europe expects to receive support from their G-20 colleagues, in the next Group meeting, which will take place on November 3 and...

The Arms Industry Will be Pleased

Of recent there have been reams of newsprint devoted to the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan; and its cost, not the least in human lives. Who profits is to be found in the small print. With escalating violence tearing that nation apart...

The IMF Cultures – Is time ripe to abandon the IMF?

By Raul de Sagastizabal   Hedging behaviour, a high degree of groupthink, intellectual capture, a general mind-set that excludes contrary views, fiefdom battles, inadequate analytical approaches, and lack of accountability should make governments...

IMFs Forecast Mistakes are not Trivial

The storm that threatens the global economy has been raging ever since the toxic assets crisis started five long years ago. That crisis has not ended, or receded, but transformed into multiple crises: from fiscal deficit and sovereign debt to poverty,...

United Kingdom Proposes an Unprecedented Banking Reform

The United Kingdom proposes to reform its internal banking system and split the retail bank from the investment bank. The Independent Commission on Banking (ICB)[i] has just presented[ii] its report concerning the banking sector’s reform. The ICB was...

Dark Clouds over the Global Economy

By Raul de Sagastizabal The downgrade of American bonds along with the problems of the European over-indebtedness increases the fear of a recession or a sharp slowdown in the global economy. Much of the market turmoil responds to the fear of investors,...