The Political Economist

After summing up the successes and failures of my last years' predictions in the previous post, it's time to make new ones. Each year the same; I look ahead and try to anticipate the most important economic and political outcomes on a national, regional, and global scale. I tend to be quite precise ( see my track record ), but I always manage to overlook the importance of some events (like the Ukrainian crisis in my predictions for 2014 , or the refugee crisis for 2015). For the upcoming year one of the arcs will be 'Women in charge' . Why such a title? Well, primarily because by the end of next year we could have 5 out 10 most powerful political positions in the world held by women.  Angela Merkel, the EU (German) Chancellor, Christine Lagarde, Director of the IMF, and Janet Yellen, the Chairman of the Fed, could be joined by Hilary Clinton as the next President of the United States, and quite possibly Irina Bokova as the Secretary General of the United Nation...

This is becoming a sort of a post-Christmas tradition on the blog - each year in the weak after Christmas I offer a wrap up of the year by evaluating my last year's predictions . Once again, I have to say, it was a good year in terms of what I got right (I managed to even beat my own predictions from 2014 : 85% compared to last year's 75%), but there were a few events that went under my radar (the Greece situation triggered by Syriza's victory, and the refugee crisis).  The title of last year's predictions was: "2015: Back to Realpolitik and back to growth" . My main prediction was that most economies in the West would return to having steady rates of economic growth (which came true), and that debates over the economy will be overshadowed by the return of realpolitik and muscle-flexing between Russia and the West. I've also stated that "low oil prices will be the key in prompting a stronger recovery", which they were, and I managed to exclu...

As you may have noticed, blogging has been particularly slow over the past few months. From the beginning of the year as well, compared to previous years. This is due to a number of commitments I have bestowed upon myself (including a lot of new research I've been doing), and it will likely continue until the end of the year, so expect regular blogging to continue as it has in the past as of 2016. In the mean time I will write an occasional comment on a burning issue, but due to many outstanding obligations I will again be rather slow. It will be quality, not quantity in the next few months.  So, let's recap what has happened over the summer, and what awaits in the forthcoming months. Keeping up with the Greeks A whole number of things happened in Greece. The most important one was the referendum on the new austerity package  ("the bailout referendum") in July which the Greeks overwhelmingly rejected. In the immediate aftermath their Finance Ministe...

Well, well, well, it seems the Cold War era is back upon us. And I'm not just saying this as a consequence of a holiday season James Bond movie marathon that I watched. No, it's real, or to be more precise it's - Realpolitik ! It seems that diplomats are setting the stage once again, and that the debate over Russia vs the West is likely to overtake the debate on the economy next year. Which is good on one hand as it implies that the economy is recovering so it's no longer the main focus of attention, but on the other hand it's bad since foreign policy standoffs only build uncertainty and are not good for economic recoveries. But overall the economy actually is expected to perform quite well next year (well, apart from Russia, but more on that below). Low oil prices will be the key in prompting a stronger recovery. The IMF links a 10% change in oil prices to roughly 0.2% change in global GDP. Prices that have fallen by 50% in the last 6 months are likely to be a s...

This week I was in London where I attended the Margaret Thatcher Conference on Liberty (follow the Twitter feed on #Liberty2014 ) organized by the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) (here's a link to some blog posts I wrote for them). It was an international conference held in London's historical Guildhall to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the foundation of the CPS by Sir Keith Joseph and Lady Thatcher. It featured a series of world class speakers; from professors such as Niall Ferguson, Luigi Zingales, Deirdre McCloskey, Richard Epstein, Deepak Lal, Art Laffer, to former and current politicians such as Australia's ex-PM John Howard, Estonian PM Taavi Roivas, Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Radoslaw Sikorski, British MEP Daniel Hannan, UK Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove, retired US army General Petraeus, and a number of journalists, businessmen and the like. And of course the CPS chairman Lord Saatchi who presented a new policy aimed at restoring...