Puzzles, Paradoxes, Controversies, and the Global Economy

2015 | Business & Finance

In this wide-ranging collection of essays first published between 2007 and 2014, Charles Wolf Jr. shares his insights on the world's economies, including those of China, the United States, Japan, Korea, India, and others. First appearing in such periodicals as in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and the Weekly Standard, among others, these chapters take on a range of questions about the global economy. Wolf discusses the paradoxes and puzzles within China's political economy and in its interactions with the United States. He analyses the shortcomings of Keynesian economics as a response to the 2008 recession, as well as the weaknesses of policies and actions inferred from the theory, and compares those weaknesses with those of austerity policies intended to limit government spending and indebtedness. He also offers his views on economic inequality and where its principal sources may truly lay, China's currency and the continuing controversy about whether and when it may become a major international reserve currency, and many more insights on key economic issues affecting the global economy.

Bringing these essays together for the first time in a single volume, including two essays not yet published elsewhere (one dealing with the recovery's puzzles, the other with the laudable but not necessarily best policies resulting from bipartisanship), this book enables the reader to absorb the author's expert perspective during the years in a collection in which the whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Each chapter includes a brief "post audit" in which the author attempts to grade how well or ill the essay seems in retrospect.

Charles Wolf (Author)