We are back from a fascinating and exhilarating experience with the GIC (www.interdependence.org). One of our delegate colleagues was John Mauldin, who has already published commentary on the trip. He has given us permission to share it with our readers. Excerpts from his report are below.
As I mentioned last Monday night in my Outside the Box, I did not make it to Turks and Caicos, but did end up in Baton Rouge for a special seminar on the Deepwater Horizon Gulf oil spill. I have both good news (or maybe more like less-bad news) and bad news. Today’s letter is […]
We dined on Aug. 11 at the Governor’s Mansion in Baton Rouge and were hosted by the Lieutenant Governor of the state of Louisiana, Scott Angelle, who was elegant, gracious, charming, and informative. He was a Democrat, he was quick to tell us, and with self-deprecating reassurance, about the most “underwhelming” person in a high […]
The estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude that flowed into the Gulf of Mexico from the Macondo well was the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Not surprisingly, the resulting damage to the livelihoods of fishermen and other Gulf Coast businesses, and the environmental threat to delicate natural habitats, created a media and political furor.
We are a nation of infants. Short on vision, short on delay of gratification, driven by desires which we experience as needs. Luxuries we deem necessities. Power, lucre. We are greedy, glutinous. Witness the steadily increasing width of the ever ravenous man, woman, child on the street. Like the typical two year old, we want […]
After traveling for a week in Prague and Paris, we can report that there are few optimists on Europe – either among the Americans we were traveling with or the Europeans that we met. However, the pessimists had a wide variety of reasons for their negative outlook and often the root of their concern was […]
Ladies and gentlemen, I am very much honored to open this second session of conferences in Paris and I would like to thank the Global Interdependence Centre for having Banque de France as a partner of this full week conference. I will give the point of view of a central banker on the recent events […]
If you listen to Washington and New Yorkers working for bailed out institutions or in offices 100 floors above Wall Street, the recovery is weak because banks, and now small banks in particular, won’t lend money to small businesses. There has been plenty of evidence to the contrary (demand is weak rather than banks are […]
The past three years have dramatically underscored the interdependence of the world’s financial institutions and financial markets. The financial crisis also, by the way, increased awareness of the interdependence of the actions of monetary and fiscal authorities around the world. In light of the crisis and the reality of financial interdependence, the Federal Reserve expanded […]
As the “Great Recession” recedes, the aftershocks of public anger are exploding with a political passion not seen since the Great Depression.. In this tumult, knives are out for the two leading central banks – the U.S. Federal Reserve (the Fed) and the European Central Bank (ECB), the agencies responsible for monetary policies underpinning the […]
Congress has increased the cost of unskilled labor by 10.7% in the middle of the worst recession since the early 1980s. The unemployment rate is 9.5%. It is unclear how this is supposed to help the economy – unless you are Labor Secretary Solis or the Economic Policy Institute. The claim is that this will […]
