Breaking Down and Making Sense of Global Capital Markets
May 7 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
If large trade imbalances are the "cause" of the trade backlash, why did this not take place in the 1980s with Japan? The answer is Japan was granted a way out: foreign direct investment--build locally sell locally. (1/10)
This is the strategy the US adopted earlier so that even by the early 1960s sales by majority-owned affiliates of US companies broadly outstripped US exports. This strategy was evolutionary in the sense that it adopted to (2/10)
Jan 17, 2021 • 9 tweets • 3 min read
An antiquarian is a collector of old facts, like what Nixon quipped in response to the damage of unilaterally severing the last tie between the dollar and gold. A historian creatively reconstructs the past. (1/n)
Can one imagine re-telling the modern history of the $USD going back to WWI without discussing the Suez Crisis, and the origins of the eurodollar market by the Soviet Union in response? (2/n).
Sep 26, 2020 • 9 tweets • 4 min read
While recognizing the PRC's human rights violations domestically and an aggressive projection of power in the South China Sea, one needs to be wary of a war camp and its steady drumbeat
Consider the Phase 1 trade deal. There were two components. 1/8 Thread
There is a quantitative commitment of Chinese purchases of several categories of US goods. There were also a few dozen market-opening measures as well.
Here is the @FT overview of the agreement: ft.com/content/a01564… 2/8
Jul 4, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
In the mid-1980s, I completed a MA in Am history and wrote my thesis on Frederick Douglass. I was interested in how one resists a system that is backed by law. His July 4th speech is powerful stuff.
Here it is read by James Earl Jones: (1/8)
Douglass bequeathed a mixed legacy and it was evident in subsequent generations of Black leaders in the US from Booker T Washington and W.E.B. De Bois to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Douglass supported Lincoln but often chided him for moving too slow. (2/8)
May 13, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
@Brad_Setser@Mauerback Sometimes the focus on the tax avoidance by US MNC may obscure the real globalization that exists. The 3 tax havens most cited (Ire, Lux, Neth) accord for about 1/4 of the assets of affiliates of US MNCs while assets in the UK alone are 3/4 as large (1/4)
The value-added by US affiliates was $1.7 trillion globally and UK and Germany account for nearly 20% alone. Affiliates of US MNCs employ 14 mln people outside the US. Europe accounts for about 4.8 mln or about 1/3. (2/4)
