március 11. 05:00 | On the eve of Chinese New Year, the People’s Bank of China (PBC) surprised the market by announcing – for the second consecutive time in a month – an increase in banks’ mandatory-reserve ratio by 50 basis points, bringing it to 16.5%.

március 11. 05:00 | A kínai újév előestéjén a kínai jegybank egy hónapon belül másodszor lepte meg a piacokat a kereskedelmi banki tartalékráta kötelező emelésével, amely így fél ponttal, 16,5 százalékra nőtt. Nem sokkal korábban a kormány fellépett a helyhatóságok túlzott hitelfelvétele ellen, a regionális ingatlanpiacokat pedig azzal hűtötte le, hogy megemelte az ingatlanfejlesztők tőkefedezeti követelményét és a második lakás vásárlásakor előírt kötelező önrészt.

március 9. 05:00 | Európán és Amerikán a fiskális megszorítások hulláma söpör végig. Ezt megelőzően sokakat meglepett a költségvetési hiányok mértéke, csakúgy, mint a gazdasági visszaesésé. A dereguláció tegnapi szószólói – akik szerint a kormányoknak passzívaknak kellett volna maradniuk – ugyan tiltakoztak, közgazdászok szerint azonban az állami kiadások hatásosak voltak, és elháríthatóvá tették a újabb depressziót.

március 9. 05:00 | A wave of fiscal austerity is rushing over Europe and America. The magnitude of budget deficits – like the magnitude of the downturn – has taken many by surprise. But despite protests by the yesterday’s proponents of deregulation, who would like the government to remain passive, most economists believe that government spending has made a difference, helping to avert another Great Depression.

március 5. 09:29 | Chinese officials and private investors around the world have been worrying aloud about whether their dollar investments are safe. Since the Chinese government holds a large part of its $2 trillion of foreign exchange in dollars, they have good reason to focus on the future value of the greenback. And investors with smaller dollar holdings, who can shift to other currencies much more easily than the Chinese, are right to ask themselves whether they should be diversifying into non-dollar assets – or even shunning the dollar completely.

március 3. 05:30 | The euro’s current weakness has one culprit: Greece. At 14% of GDP, Greece’s latest current-account deficit was the largest of the euro-zone countries after Cyprus. Its debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 113% by the end of 2009. As this year’s deficit is projected to be more than 12% of a shrinking GDP, the debt-to-GDP ratio will soar above 125% by the end of 2010, the highest in the euro zone.

március 2. 05:30 | The euro is a unique and unusual construction whose viability is now being tested. Otmar Issing, one of the fathers of the common currency, correctly stated the principle on which it was founded: the euro was meant to be a monetary union, but not a political one.

február 25. 05:30 | When US President Barack Obama announced in late January his intention to seek tough new rules for banks, he wasn’t expecting to make friends on Wall Street. We will henceforth prevent banks from trading on their own account and from growing too large, Obama declared. The internal battle within the Obama administration seemed to have been won by Paul Volcker, the impressive and outspoken former Federal Reserve chairman who has long been a critic of financial innovation.

február 23. 11:43 | Greece’s fiscal problems are, as I have argued many times, but the tip of a global iceberg. For the next installment of the recent global financial crisis will be rising sovereign risk, especially in advanced economies that run massive budget deficits and accumulate large stocks of public debt as they socialize private financial losses in order to revive economic growth.

február 16. 06:00 | Defeat in the Massachusetts senatorial election has deprived America’s Democrats of the 60 votes needed to pass health-care reform and other legislation, and it has changed American politics – at least for the moment. But what does that vote say about American voters and the economy?