International Political Economy (Fall 09)

Here’s the Reuters story to which I referred:

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE56L33Z20090722

PK has a new editorial on our current government deficits:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/opinion/23krugman.html?_r=1

I thought it was apropos of our recent discussions about indebtedness.

New article from BusinessWeek on some potential hitches to the implementation of “cap and trade.”

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_48/b4157054815275.htm

Some recent news related to IPE:

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14901104&source=features_box_main

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14900648&source=features_box_main

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14744915

The IPE podcast for fall 2009 is up and working!

I’ve added a new page entitled Podcast with the information. Here’s a direct link to the iTunes Store:

Al Gore was on The Daily Show last week. I’ve just put the clip in as “recommended” for tomorrow’s reading. You can check it out here:

Recommended: “Al Gore.” The Daily Show. Comedy Central, November 3, 2009. Available via: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-november-4-2009/al-gore

Some folks at the European Centre for International Political Economy have written a paper suggesting that China’s use of its “Great Firewall”–which blocks pernicious web presences like, say, Google–may run contrary to some of the WTO agreements.

Here’s the Ars write up:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/11/smashing-chinas-great-firewall-through-trade-disputes.ars

Seeing my two of my favorite things combined–tech & IPE–almost made my head explode from all of the glee.

The following are several articles about money, which I think follow our ongoing discussion nicely:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125549031253384213.html

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/eichengreen10

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rogoff61/English

http://www.ny.frb.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed49.html

We’re starting our consideration of money on Thursday. Krugman’s latest editorial explicitly links the “gold-standard mentality” to some of the current approaches to the contemporary crisis. I think you’ll enjoy it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/opinion/12krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

In the spirit of the discussion about “exchange controls”, here’s a quick article about China’s restrictions on the sale of foreign goods in the domestic market. China is allowed to impose traditional “capital controls” according to the IMF and WTO agreements; but the WTO doesn’t like China trying to regulate trade & commerce. So, we see some separation here between capital controls and trade/commercial regulation.

http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/19515.cfm

My hunch–and it is just a hunch–is that China is finding it more difficult to rely strictly on conventional capital controls–restrictions on investment, foreign ownership, &c–and is turning to more rigorous restrictions on trade and commerce. By channeling imports through state owned enterprises, China can have a larger influence on the prices (and total sales) of these goods in the home market. That will influence the balance of payments and the over all domestic price level.

As we’ll see, the IMF was designed to allow for–even celebrate–capital controls. But the GATT/WTO was created to combat all such management of trade and commerce. Why the seemingly antithetical positions–one in favor of laissez-faire and the other decidedly not? Stay tuned: we’ll develop that more later in the term. But here’s the quick answer: Keynes recognized that states needed some regulation to ensure policy autonomy; and he figured that capital controls would be the most innocuous types of restrictions.

The G-20

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/32e586c0-a7a0-11de-b0ee-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=60a3db68-b177-11dd-b97a-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1

http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2009/09/22/f-g20-agenda.html

Tobin Taxes (which we’ll cover later)

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14455661&source=hptextfeature

Net Neutrality

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-10357806-266.html

John Stewart on Ted Stevens on Net Neutrality

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-july-12-2006/headlines—internet

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-july-12-2006/party-pooper

In several places on this site, I emphasize the importance of regularly backing up your data. Of course, the easiest way to do this might just be to buy an external drive. But if you’re short on cash, this article from Gizmodo details some of the ways to do this without the expense of buying an external drive for this purpose.

http://gizmodo.com/5357993/how-to-back-up-all-your-stuff-for-free-no-hard-drive-needed

The Discussion Questions for next week have been posted. In the future, I’ll try to get them up by Friday evening of the previous week. Last week, I had some beginning of the term events and the usual preoccupations which prevented that.

Please note that this site is still under construction. Much of the material from Spring 2009 appears here. The final version (for Fall 2009) should appear in late August.