Amid a general concern – and rightly so – about youth unemployment, there is another reality that is going almost unnoticed: the share of those over 55 that are not working. Some of them are unemployed, others are retired or out of the labor market. The first thing worth noticing when looking at this data […]
The Tremendous Effects of Lehman Brothers’ Fall Five Years Later
The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers was the starting point of the worst financial crisis in our recent history. The collapse of one of the most important banking institutions spread its effects worldwide. Are we still suffering the consequences of this surprising fall? Have the authorities implemented new measures to avoid another huge financial and economic […]
Capital controls: the right time to talk about them?
In recent months, a number of emerging countries have been experiencing capital outflows. As expected, these outflows have tended to depreciate the currencies of emerging economies. More importantly, these outflows have also started raising doubts about the resilience of growth rates in the emerging world. Money started flowing out of emerging markets right after Ben […]
Spain Nears Trade Equilibrium
Well, equilibrium is a bit exaggerated. In May, Spain’s trade balance accumulated over 12 months – my favorite way of looking at this data for seasonality – registered a deficit of about 20.5 billion euros, which is equal to roughly 2 percent of the GDP. The data improved by slightly more than 2 billion euros in April, due to an increase […]
Towards a re-balanced China
Since the start of the opening-up and reform period in 1978, the rest of the world has been stupefied by China’s long period of very high growth. Now all we hear about is that growth is slowing down. Further, this time the chinese authorities are not offsetting the slowdown by large fiscal and monetary stimuli: […]
