{"id":2019,"date":"2008-10-12T10:51:40","date_gmt":"2008-10-12T13:51:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=2019"},"modified":"2008-10-20T17:34:25","modified_gmt":"2008-10-20T20:34:25","slug":"the-economy-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/?p=2019","title":{"rendered":"The economy. Stupid."},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>his week, the global economy crisis dominated the headlines. The most shocking headline was the ‘Iceland meltdown’: you’ve probably seen the images of the downward spiral<\/a> of the currency of Iceland, the Krona. There was, of course, also the spat between the UK and Iceland, and it had all to do with British savers and a collapsing Iceland bank<\/a>. The situation in Iceland is grim, as illustrated in the following quote:\n<\/p>\n

Inflation is around 14%; on Friday the central bank announced that one of Oddsson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two fellow governors, Ingimundur Fridriksson, was taking a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153short medical leave of absence\u00e2\u20ac\u009d on the advice of his doctors. Earlier last week Iceland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, was treated in hospital for heart problems\n<\/p>\n

There’s an interesting anecdote in that article about how (right-wing) Icelandic politicians determined the fate of the Krona by implementing free-market policies and steering away from the Eurozone integration. The answer to solving all your country’s economical problems? Re-nationalize!<\/em>\n<\/p>\n

I also read that the uh, the president is going to take care of the economical issues, after addressing the G-7, G-8, G-10 or G-20 (Pick your lucky Bingo number!). Anyway: from the sidelines, it looks like the US officials were not really well-received or lets say it this way, un-enthusiastically received. I’m not sure why that is, but I wouldn’t be surprised that many European countries still bear a grudge against the US administration’s lack-lustre monetary policies (read: “the policy to intentionally keep the dollar low”), which (of course) worked against the European economies. On the Dutch news site nu.nl, I read that the Dutch economic minister wasn’t all too impressed with the US officials Bernanke and Paulson: Apparently they were both already gone when the most important discussions took place (rough translation from Dutch<\/a>):\n<\/p>\n

The Americans see the financial markets problems as a ‘company accident’ and don’t treat it as an important economical problem which needs to solved right now.\n<\/p>\n

I could end up with a diatribe about the Bush administration, but the only words I can come up with right now is ‘failure of global proportions’. For the last eight-years the Americans had no long-term economical plans nor did they actually lead on a global level. Well, OK, I’m slightly wrong here. There was a plan: So once in a while Bernanke just had to push that ‘Lower the Rates’ button. To his credit, this is not what he did all the time, but, I think many people agree that he was ‘too sunny’ about the US economy since he took over Greenspan’s job in 2006.\n<\/p>\n

Anyway: this is a long weekend in Canada. Have a great Thanksgiving.\n<\/p>\n

\n

Update 1: <\/strong> The Economics published a survey asking US economists their views of the presidential candidates economical plans<\/a>. The full report (in PDF format) is here<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Update 2:<\/strong> Related: Paul Krugman wins the Nobel prize for economics<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Update 3 @ (10\/20\/08):<\/strong> “Iceland could quickly become an EU member”<\/a>.\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, the global economy crisis dominated the headlines. The most shocking headline was the ‘Iceland meltdown’: you’ve probably seen the images of the downward spiral of the currency of Iceland, the Krona. There was, of course, also the spat … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[11],"tags":[344,58,160,345],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2019"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2020,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2019\/revisions\/2020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hoogervorst.ca\/arthur\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}