巨人
最新书摘：
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Kevin Lee2021-05-21There are two reasons why such calls are ill advised, to say the least. The first, to repeat, is that a dollar devaluation would have grave implications for Chinese financial institutions, many of which hold their reserves in dollars but have renminbi-denominated assets. The consequence could be deflation spreading throughout the Chinese economy.61 The second reason is that anti-Chinese measures would hurt American firms, a growing number of which are investing directly in China to exploit its combination of cheap but relatively good-quality labor in an apparently stable institutional setting. Foreign direct investment in China now totals around 40 percent of Chinese GDP, a level of Western participation in the Chinese economy not seen since the era of the imperial Open Door.Low long-ter...
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Kevin Lee2021-05-21Given that domestic political gridlock will surely lead to a stream of deficits in the coming decades, a great deal depends on whether or not foreign investors will be willing to absorb increasing quantities of U.S. treasuries. According to one line of argument, there is nothing to worry about on this score. The reason that so much overseas capital flows into the United States, so it is said, is that the American economy is the engine of global growth and foreign investors simply want a “piece of the action.” Yet foreign investors seem willing to settle for markedly lower returns when they invest in the United States than the returns Americans get when they invest overseas.55 Far from acquiring equity in America’s dynamic corporations, many foreign investors turn out to be mainly intereste...
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Kevin Lee2021-05-21Governments in fiscal difficulties have often resorted to printing money because doing so helps in three ways. First, they get to exchange intrinsically worthless pieces of paper for real goods and services. Secondly, inflation waters down the real value of official debt. Thirdly, if the salaries of government workers are paid with a lag or are only partially adjusted for inflation, inflation will lower their real incomes. The same holds true for other government transfer payments.
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Kevin Lee2021-05-21Conventional wisdom predicts that if investors and traders in government bonds anticipate a growing imbalance in a government’s fiscal policy, they will sell that government’s bonds. There are good reasons for this. A widening gap between current revenues and expenditures is usually filled in two ways. The first is by selling more bonds to the public. The second is by printing money. Other things being equal, either response leads to a decline in bond prices and a rise in interest rates, the incentive people need to purchase bonds. That incentive has to be larger when the real return of principal plus interest on the bond is threatened by default or inflation. The higher the anticipated rate of inflation is, the higher interest rates will rise because nobody wants to lend money and be paid...
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Kevin Lee2021-05-21Another way of expressing the problem is to compare our own lifetime tax burden with the lifetime tax burden the next generation will have to shoulder if the government does not do one of the above—hence the term often used to describe calculations like these: generational accounting.
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Kevin Lee2021-05-21Indeed, Americans have financed a substantial part of their increased consumption by borrowing. Household sector credit market debt rose from 44 percent of GDP in the 1960s and 1970s to 78 percent in 2002.
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Kevin Lee2021-05-21And the magnitude of the problem is such that most Americans, including those who consider themselves well informed about the nation’s finances, find it quite simply incredible. Indeed, the main reason why America’s fiscal crisis remains latent is precisely that people refuse to believe in its existence. And they are able to do this because the United States has imperceptibly come to rely on East Asian capital to stabilize its unbalanced budgets. Many commentators have noted the very muted, even quiescent reaction of China to recent American military intervention. Fewer have appreciated the extent to which China now helps underwrite American power.
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Kevin Lee2021-05-21The geographical focus of the American empire shifted repeatedly during the twentieth century. At the beginning of the century it had been a hemispheric empire, reaching eastward into the Caribbean, southward into Central America and westward into the Pacific. In the middle of the century it had reluctantly been forced to extend its reach to Europe, and for much of the cold war, the security of Western Europe seemed to matter more than Asia or, indeed, the Caribbean. Gradually, however, the Middle East came to be the hub around which American strategy turned: because of Israel, because of oil, because of terrorism. With the end of the cold war opportunities presented themselves to use America’s reviving military power against one or more of those dangerous states that simultaneously threat...
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Kevin Lee2021-05-21The United States derives a significant benefit from the status of the dollar as the world’s principal reserve currency; it is one reason why foreign investors are prepared to hold such large volumes of dollar-denominated assets. But reserve-currency status is not divinely ordained. It could be undermined if international markets took fright at the magnitude of America’s still latent fiscal crisis. A decline in the dollar would certainly hurt foreign holders of U.S. currency more than it would hurt Americans. But a shift in international expectations about U.S. finances might also bring about a sharp increase in long-term interest rates, which would have immediate and negative feedback effects on the federal deficit by pushing up the cost of debt service. It would also hurt highly geared A...
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takashisha2012-09-13期限是国家重建能否成功的关键。美国军事干预最成功的国家恰恰是美国军事存在的持续时间最长得国家，这决不是一个巧合而已。
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盛世未眠客2022-03-17美国既无须害怕欧盟的扩大，也无须担心欧盟的深化——至少因为这两个过程是互相对立的两个过程。一个联邦的欧洲的出现就可以与美国相抗衡的言论是基于对欧盟发展状况的根本误读……综合以上所有这些原因，一个共同的外交和安全政策看起来是那么的遥远，而且可能只是难以企及的雄伟梦想罢了。
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盛世未眠客2022-03-17欧洲是一个奇怪的联盟，它是一个幻想着成为联邦，却从未成为真正的一个联邦的同盟。它有行政机构、立法机构、一个上议院、一个中央银行、一种共同货币、一面旗帜和一首国歌。但是它只有极小的共同预算和最低配置的共同军队的框架。跟欧盟设计者的初衷不同，更多的决议仍然需要国家政府在欧洲理事会会议和政府间会议上作决定。欧盟没有一个共同的语言、共同的邮政系统、一支共同的足球队，甚至连统一标准的电源插座也没有。