With the European Union (EU) heading into a double dip recession, even before the peak level of GDP of the previous business cycle has been regained (Figure 1), it is evident that the solutions adopted to deal with Europe’s economic crisis have failed. But the focus of financial markets on Greece’s debt crisis should not [...]

Currently a number of attempts are being made to claim a major revival of US industry is taking place. For example Harold L. Sirkin, of the Boston Consulting Group, writes: ‘A resurgence of U.S. manufacturing seems to be in the offing. With production costs rising in China, some companies are bringing their manufacturing back to the [...]

The magnitude of the blow suffered by the UK economy since the beginning of the financial crisis is very considerably minimized by not presenting it in terms of a common international yardstick. Gauged by decline in GDP, using a common international purchasing measure, dollars, no other economy in the world has shrunk even remotely as [...]

The beginning of 2012 is a suitable moment to assess China’s economic prospects for the year and coming period. This overall perspective is clear - China will grow strongly, remaining the world’s fastest growing major economy, and will continue to substantially outperform Western pessimist predictions. This is the same fundamental analysis maintained by the author over the [...]

Commodity prices are a particularly sensitive indicator for the world economy due to their strong and pro-cyclical price fluctuations. These in turn are linked to supply inelasticities - the obstacles to and pronounced time delays in changing the supply of many commodities.
Agricultural commodities frequently require a minimum of a year to increase output due to [...]

This article was written by John Ross in 1996 at a time when political debates in Britain, stimulated by the beginning of the process to create the single currency after the Maastrict Treaty, were focused on whether or not the UK should join the new single currency. The article concludes that not only is it [...]

The full scale of the difference in economic performance of China compared to the US, Europe and Japan during the international financial crisis is shown in Figure 1. It is summarised in the following figures:

In the four years to the latest available data, for the 3rd quarter of 2011, China’s [...]

As G20 leaders met in Cannes, they faced an economic situation in the developed economies best summed up by Goldman Sachs, the company which invented the term ‘BRIC’, as the ‘Great Stagnation’. Until recently developments following the financial crash of 2008 had been accurately termed the ‘Great Recession’ - describing the greatest economic downturn since [...]

One of the more factually inaccurate pictures being spread by supporters of the policies of the present UK government - with its priority to budget deficit reduction - is that UK economic performance during the financial crisis is superior to that of the evidently crisis hit Eurozone. A typical version of this appears in an article [...]

The international financial system is passing through the agony of a new round of the Eurozone debt crisis for the simple reason that European governments, like that in the US, refuse to deal with the core of the economic recession in Europe for reasons of economic dogma.
Anyone who looks at the economic data for the [...]