Barry Eichengreen - The Japan Times

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Barry Eichengreen

For Barry Eichengreen's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

COMMENTARY / World

May 16, 2012

Is Europe on a cross of gold?

Increasingly, one hears predictions that the euro will go the way of the gold standard in the 1930s. And, increasingly, the reasoning behind such forecasts seems persuasive. But does that mean that the euro doomsayers are right?

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 18, 2012

The ECB's lethal monetary inhibition

Europe's financial system on the brink of disaster, the European Central Bank stunned the markets with an unprecedented intervention, offering banks across the eurozone essentially unlimited liquidity against any and all collateral for an exceptional period of three years.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 15, 2012

Europe's trust deficit undermines crisis resolution

There is no shortage of talk nowadays about Europe's deficits and the need to correct them. Critics point to governments' gaping budget deficits. They cite the southern European countries' chronic external deficits. They highlight the eurozone's institutional deficits — a single currency and a central bank but none of the other elements of a well-functioning monetary union.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 14, 2011

2012: the year of muddling

Nowadays there is no shortage of pundits, economic or otherwise, warning of impending disaster. If right, they are hailed as seers; if wrong, chances are that no one will remember. So here's a forecast: There will be no shortage of predictions that 2012 is shaping up as a disastrous year.

COMMENTARY / World

Aug 18, 2011

What can take the dollar's place?

For more than a half-century, the dollar has been not only America's currency, but the world's as well. It has been the dominant unit used in cross-border transactions and the principal asset held as reserves by central banks and governments.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 20, 2011

A Greek Marshall Plan makes sense

It should now be clear to even the most blinkered observer that the Greek economy is in desperate need of help. Unemployment is 16 percent and rising. Even after a year of excruciating spending cuts, the budget deficit still exceeds 10 percent of GDP. Residents don't pay taxes. The system of property registration is a mess. There is little confidence in the banks, and even less in the government and its policies.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 15, 2011

The U.S. Federal Reserve is playing with fire

The dollar has had its ups and downs, but the downs have clearly dominated of late. The greenback has lost more than a quarter of its value against other currencies, adjusted for inflation, over the last decade. It is down by nearly 5 percent since the beginning of 2011, matching the lowest level plumbed since the Bretton Woods System of pegged exchange rates collapsed in 1973.

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 15, 2011

Safer alternative bears on dollar

BERKELEY, Calif. — This is the season for international monetary conferences. In March, national leaders assembled in Nanjing, China, to speechify on exchange and interest rates. And, in early April, leading thinkers and former policymakers met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the birthplace in 1944 of the International Monetary Fund and our dollar-centered international monetary system.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 13, 2011

Is the world ready for a China slowdown?

BERKELEY, Calif. — With the world's rich countries still hung over from the financial crisis, the global economy has come to depend on emerging markets to drive growth. Increasingly, machinery exporters, energy suppliers and raw-materials producers alike look to China and other fast-growing developing countries as the key source of incremental demand.

COMMENTARY / World

Feb 12, 2011

Egypt should worry China

BERKELEY, Calif. — A strictly economic interpretation of events in Tunisia and Egypt would be too simplistic — however tempting such an exercise is for an economist. That said, there is no question that the upheavals in both countries — and elsewhere in the Arab world — largely reflect their governments' failure to share the wealth.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 15, 2010

Preventing a currency war

BERKELEY — Three years into the financial crisis, one might think that the world could put Great Depression analogies behind it. But they are back, and with more force than ever. Now the fear is that currency warfare, leading to tariffs and retaliation, could cause disruptions to the international trading system as serious as those of the 1930s.

COMMENTARY / World

Nov 13, 2010

Is America succumbing to the 'British disease'?

BERKELEY, Calif. — In the United States, the scent of decline is in the air. Imperial overreach, political polarization and a costly financial crisis are weighing on the economy. Some pundits now worry that America is about to succumb to the "British disease."

COMMENTARY / World

Oct 15, 2010

How to prevent a disruptive currency war

BERKELEY, Calif. — Three years into the financial crisis, one might think that the world could put Great Depression analogies behind it. But they are back with more force than ever. Now the fear is that currency warfare, leading to tariffs and retaliation, could cause disruptions to the international trading system as serious as those of the 1930s.

COMMENTARY / World

Jul 21, 2010

No global shortage of fiscal fibs and follies

BERKELEY, Calif. — Across the globe, the debate over fiscal consolidation has the distinct sound of two sides talking past one another.

COMMENTARY / World

Jun 23, 2010

China needs a service-sector revolution

BEIJING — China is getting its exchange-rate adjustment whether it likes it or not. While Chinese officials continue to mull the right time to let the renminbi rise, manufacturing workers are voting with their feet — and their picket lines.

COMMENTARY / World

May 19, 2010

Instead of folding, EU leaders raise the stakes

BERKELEY, Calif. — The last few weeks have been the most amazing — and important — period of the euro's 11-year existence. First came the Greek crisis, followed by the Greek bailout. When the crisis spread to Portugal and Spain, there was the $1 trillion rescue. Finally, there were unprecedented purchases of Spanish, Portuguese, Greek and Irish bonds by the European Central Bank. All of this was unimaginable a month ago.

COMMENTARY / World

Apr 28, 2010

Why China has got it right on the renminbi

BERKELEY — After a period of high tension between the United States and China, culminating earlier this month in rumblings of an all-out trade war, it is now evident that a change in Chinese exchange-rate policy is coming. China is finally prepared to let the renminbi resume its slow but steady upward march. We can now expect the renminbi to begin appreciating again, very gradually, against the dollar, as it did between 2005 and 2007.

COMMENTARY / World

Mar 26, 2010

Nationality is no way to select IMF leader

BERKELEY, Calif. — The International Monetary Fund, many say, has had a good crisis. As recently as three years ago, many observers thought that the Fund had outlived its usefulness and should be closed down. Since then, it has intervened in Hungary, Latvia, Iceland and Ukraine, among other crisis-stricken countries — and has received a massive infusion of new resources.

COMMENTARY / World

Jan 29, 2010

A bully pulpit for Obama's financial reforms

BERKELEY, Calif. — President Barack Obama has not had an easy first year economically. He inherited a financial system on the verge of collapse. He was bequeathed an economy in recession and an unemployment rate destined to rise. And he faced a Congress and an economics profession with a tendency to confuse these real demons with imaginary ones. His strength has been not to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good.

COMMENTARY / World

Dec 25, 2009

The challenge of Seoul's G20 chairmanship

BERKELEY, Calif. — On Jan. 1, South Korea takes over the Group of 20 chairmanship from the United Kingdom. Korea is not the first emerging market to chair the G20, but it is the first to do so since the global financial crisis. And it is the first to do so since the G20 emerged as the steering committee for the world economy.

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