By Paolo von Schirach May 17, 2012 WASHINGTON – I am quite uneasy with the hype surrounding the Facebook IPO. I thought I was in a minority of one when I saw an equally skeptical The Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Rich Karlgaard, Forbes publisher. (The Future Is More Than Facebook, May 17, 2012). Well, [...]
By Paolo von Schirach May 16, 2012 WASHINGTON – Africa’s economies are growing, but lack of basic infrastructure is still a huge impediment. To start with, most of Africa still lacks electricity, something that the rest of the world takes for granted. Most enterprises need to rely on back up generators, something that adds substantially to [...]
By Paolo von Schirach May 15, 2012 WASHINGTON – If you leave out Germany and the northern countries, Europe does not grow and belonging to the Eurozone right now does not help growth for those southern members (Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal) that are doing so poorly. Being in the Euro they cannot devalue, while [...]
By Paolo von Schirach May 12, 2012 WASHINGTON - A Fox TV interview by John Stossel with Luis Fortuno, the Governor of Puerto Rico, made me curious to learn more. This boysh (just 51 years old, and looking more like 31) Republican has had the courage to meet head on the challenge of a gigantic state debt [...]
By Paolo von Schirach Related story: http://schirachreport.com/index.php/2012/04/20/france-has-many-talented-entrepreneurs-the-trouble-is-that-they-emigrate-and-do-not-expect-them-flocking-back-if-socialist-hollande-gets-elected-president/ May 9, 2012 WASHINGTON – Francois Hollande won the French presidential elections by promising that he will promote economic growth as the best cure for France, as opposed to following the Germany inspired “austerity only” diet included in the Fiscal Compact recently agreed upon by most EU countries.
By Paolo von Schirach May 8, 2012 WASHINGTON – Just a few weeks ago Agustin Carstens, the Governor of the bank of Mexico, argued in a Washington public forum that the European debt crisis will not be over until the Europeans will be able to convince markets that all is well and that there is absolutely no [...]
By Paolo von Schirach May 7, 2012 WASHINGTON – Watching on C-SPAN, (the meritorious public affairs TV channels), a session of the US House Budget Committee was quite depressing. There was no real debate on the issues aimed at getting to some constructive policy outcome. I heard only prepackaged slogans and a lot of predictable posturing.
By Paolo von Schirach May 4, 2012 WASHINGTON – A really lousy jobs report. Only 115,000 new jobs created in the US in the month of April. And the unemployment ticked down to 8.1% just because 300,000 Americans dropped out, and so they are no longer counted as unemployed. But the really scary item is the percentage of Americans [...]
By Paolo von Schirach May 1, 2012 WASHINGTON - In the never ending Greek fiscal debacle saga, everybody’s focus has been on the unfolding drama. Will this Eurozone-IMF rescue package work? Or will it be the next one, until finally something that would stick is cobbled together? But, while not unreasonable, this focus on crisis management and related countermeasures took all [...]
By Paolo von Schirach April 30, 2012 WASHINGTON – The Europeans are (rightfully) clamoring against an EU mandated “austerity only therapy” aimed at bringing several fiscally damaged countries back to financial health. Indeed, as it has been pointed out by many economists, (Nouriel Roubini, among others), austerity alone causes already weak economies to contract. When governments cut spending, the fiscal [...]