In the past 20 yrs, China extended >$800 billion in loans to emerging market and developing country economies to finance infrastructure, energy etc. China’s loan portfolio surpassed those of the World Bank, the IMF, and all 22 Paris Club creditor governments combined.

Impossible to repost or discuss this chart too many times. A tale of two crises & two policy responses. One of them we still inexplicably talk about as a success, & one we still inexplicably talk about as a failure. 1.5 years of modestly high inflation did a number on us.

Could there be a clearer sign that the RN believes France enjoys more effective monetary sovereignty inside the € than outside it (as I have long argued)? www.tumblr.com/rajakorman/6...

IMF: "only about half of fiscal consolidations achieve their fiscal targets, including debt reduction. A broad range of econometric methods, based on well-established methods in the empirical literature, confirm that fiscal consolidations do not reduce debt ratios, on average."

🚨New publication with Kristijan Kotarski: Enduring Structural Power? Assessing the Dominance of the Anglosphere in Global Finance Before the Trump Turn Includes novel visualizations of global finance (banking, portfolio inv & FDI) showing persistent US centrality hrcak.srce.hr/clanak/487488

A reminder that the U.S. is defacto the most sovereign sovereign in the world. Which in turn means that any attempt to reduce the asymmetry U.S. enjoys in terms of “sovereign intrusions” will likely be construed as an intrusion on US sovereignty. open.substack.com/pub/sankaran...

Love this forensic analysis of the ECB's discourse around rate hikes during the 2021-23 inflation shock. A brief sellers inflation – aka Another-World-Is-Possible – moment (blue), before the empire (green) strikes back with overwhelming force.

+1,5 miljoen werkenden tussen 1996 & 2023 Maar werkgeversbijdragen aan sociale zekerheid: 50% → <40% Gevolg: overheid vult het gat met hogere belastingen of schulden. Geen economische wet, maar politieke keuze. Tijd voor eerlijk debat: wie draagt bij, wie profiteert?

📢 New paper out in New Political Economy: "Depoliticising monetary tightening: how the European Central Bank managed the 2021–2023 inflation shock" Thread here below 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📢 New paper out in New Political Economy: "Depoliticising monetary tightening: how the European Central Bank managed the 2021–2023 inflation shock" Thread here below 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

🚨NEW PAPER🚨 We all know the 2022 energy price shock fueled the cost of living crisis. It also caused a profit bonanza for the very rich. We show the US reaped the largest profits ($377bn) of any country. 50% went to the richest 1%, only 1% to the bottom 50%. A🧵 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

How do political institutions shape today’s wave of economic interventionism? 🇺🇸 vs 🇪🇺 Find out in our new article just out in @govjournal.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... @donatodc.bsky.social

The "45% tariff" equivalent on intra-EU trade line is everywhere, even in von der Leyen’s #SOTEU last week. That number is misleading, as Smaghi explains. Lower intra-EU trade isn’t just about barriers but also consumer preferences for domestic products like food. iep.unibocconi.eu/europes-inte...

“Pretty strong evidence” that the US current account is mostly driven by foreign dynamics is actually pretty weak evidence if you only focus on household balances and ignore the evolution of the sectoral balances of the US government and US corporations…

💥 New article out @reggovjournal.bsky.social Skill-Biased Policy Change: Governing the Transition to the Knowledge Economy in Germany, Sweden & Britain @ndurazzi.bsky.social @federicofiletti.bsky.social @simonetonelli.bsky.social David Hope, Hanna Kleider onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The U.S. has lost 78k manufacturing jobs this year

The video on the FT.com front page right now is one for the ages - the collective heads of US big tech fawning over the 'leadership' of President Trump. Their participation tells you about their values. Their specific emphasis reveals what they are getting out of it.

I’m in @financialtimes.com on Trump’s recent move to make the Pentagon the top shareholder in the US only rare earths mine. This is the “worst of all worlds” resource nationalism: a toxic mix of environmental harm, militarism, Big Tech, financial de-risking, and asset appreciation. Link below ⬇️

If you are interested to know more about how EU industrial policy is being financed, in this SOMO long read, I am outlining key features of InvestEU, its redistributive effects and how it empowers financial capital - at the expense of democratic oversight and the urgently needed green transition.

De partijen die de afgelopen jaren aan de knoppen hebben gezeten, is er veel aan gelegen de voordelen voor huiseigenaren te beschermen. Ten koste van de volkshuisvesting. Ik schreef voor NRC een essay over wonen als verkiezingsthema. Morgen in de krant, nu online: www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...

Re: Trump v Fed: Some (very hastily written and heavily edited) reflections on the nature of central bank–government interdependence in the era of crisis and how financial- not fiscal dominance is what should be keeping us up at night. Also Powell is Thomas Becket. jacobin.com/2025/08/cent...

Just out: How China builds strategic dominance in high-innovation niches fracturing the economic status quo in the world: Government Guidance Funds turn fiscal money + SOE assets into venture capital with planning discipline. A different game than Europe or Korea. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

we heterodox economists have been saying this for decades, but now Big Finance is saying it, you know it's the end of liberal macro institutions, a death brought to you by Donald Trump.

Drawing on the likes of Leah Downey, Arjun Jayadev, Leon Wansleben & @geoffmann.bsky.social, I have a new piece in @nybooks.com on money, power, and central banking.

Unlike today, central banks in the 1980s avoided financial losses when implementing anti-inflationary measures because they didn't remunerate bank reserves and their balance sheets didn'tt carry the legacy of a decade of large asset purchases at low interest rates/long maturity.

My book is out today! Read my stuff! academic.oup.com/book/60584?l... … The book looks at the long-run evolution of policy around monopoly and competition in the US and France over the 20th century, using extensive archival research to track the main policy actors who changed it at key moments.

You wanna read a paper called "The Political Economy of Shitcoins"? Of course you do. @mcopelov.bsky.social and I are at your service. Full paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... Blog post: tompepinsky.com/2025/08/08/c... More below 1/

📢 New publication on the constraints faced by the multilateral development banks in the roll-out of the Wall Street Consensus. Check out my co-author @anissabougrea.bsky.social’s🧵 here below 👇

📢 New publication on the constraints faced by the multilateral development banks in the roll-out of the Wall Street Consensus. Check out my co-author @anissabougrea.bsky.social’s🧵 here below 👇

🚨New article out with @mattvermeir.bsky.social in @compchange.bsky.social: "Rolling out the Wall Street Consensus? MDBs & the Trilemma of Private Capital Mobilization" We examine why MDBs are failing to deliver on the promise of "mobilizing trillions" for the SDGs👇 Here:

I've written the final instalment of Dispatches from Seville: For COP30 in Belem, Brazil's leadership of the Baku to Belem Roadmap to USD 1.3 trillion renews the ’investible climate’ agenda in Seville www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/aft...

It makes sense to expect a new age of inducements for institutional capital pools to hold sovereign debt (aka financial repression), as @martinsandbu.ft.com argued last week. Alas, it appears state managers are too macrofinancially incompetent to pull that off and instead are self-sabotaging bigly.

I threw everything in here—the dollar, bonds, the future of the defense umbrella, the insistence on centrality, stablecoin, why centrality is not always strength, the evolution of US & global (r,g ) dynamics, and a shoutout to Steven Solomon. But no dad jokes alas.

Ive written about @ecb.europa.eu and @ec.europa.eu push for a Savings and Investment Union: SIU, the new answer to 'how do we pay for' , is a Trojan horse for the American welfare model, increasingly in the hands of (private equity) financiers www.ft.com/content/052e...

. @martinsandbu.ft.com argues that we’re entering a new era of financial repression and financial nationalism where governments are increasingly steering capital toward domestic priorities rather than leaving it to market forces. A 🧵 looking back on financial repression: on.ft.com/3TlujSW

Finally! 👇

"monetary [policy] tightening causes the largest employment losses for low-paid workers who are employed in high-paying firms before the tightening. Monetary tightening further causes a reallocation of workers to lower-paying firms."

There are basic but fundamental errors at the heart of the Wolf-Pettis thesis. Most importantly, there is a misunderstanding of the meaning and definition of 'saving'. 1/

"We have witnessed the emergence and partial maturation of a clean energy coalition that does have power." NEW an interview with @tedfertik.bsky.social on the Republican Party debate over the OBBB, cutting the IRA, and the huge expense of extending 2017's tax cuts

How did the 2021-22 cost shock impact corporations' pricing strategies? We fed 138k earnings calls into the machine – but we also read loads of them in the old-school way. 🤓 A short 🧵 on the three arguments executives relied on when explaining why they perceived an unusual pricing opportunity.

🚀 We’re proud to share the Positive Money Europe Report 2022/23/24! From unlocking finance for home renovations 🏡 to challenging deep-rooted inequalities — explore how we’re reimagining the #economy for everyone, not just the privileged few.👇👇 positivemoney.org/eu/update/po...

1/n Since I'm currently using it in my research, let me recommend once again this wonderful (prized) paper on the origins, reception and legacy of Jensen and Meckling's 1976 definition of the firm as a nexus of contracts by @dgindis.bsky.social academic.oup.com/oep/article/...

Today, @brettchristophers.bsky.social continues our series on *Democracy in Power* by examining justifications for public ownership. Is “democracy” the strongest argument for public ownership in the power sector? Is it even a credible argument? And if not, what other rationales are more persuasive?

A country that has the hegemonic debtor’s privilege of being essentially immune to BoP crises and the hegemonic creditor’s privilege of imposing conditionality not just for concessional lending in its currency but also for access to that currency’s pipelines is moaning that it bears a burden. SMDH.

🚨New Publication 🚨 in New Political Economy with the one and [email protected]. We propose the term 'Green Financial Planning' to tie together many of the terms in political economy at the moment, and demonstrate that green finance is much more than a few loans/bonds with green names

New (open access!) paper out now with Eric Helleiner and Hongying Wang in New Political Economy: "A less reluctant (green) Atlas? Explaining the People’s Bank of China’s distinctive environmental shift" 1/ A brief thread 🧵 doi.org/10.1080/1356...

You’ve heard my spiel on this for years but now you can see it here in pink in my personal version of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy. on.ft.com/4dFW4io

OK let's sort this out once and for all - over at AV I produce a "Sandwich Alignment Chart" to determine whether stablecoins are banks www.ft.com/content/60e2...

Totally making up nonsense, completely ahistorical reasons to exclude the Fed. Wizards in Robes doing authoritarian alchemy. Other, more serious countries have actual constitutional courts, so they get to live under the rule of law & be actual democracies.

This bespoke exception for the Fed is one of the most brazenly made-up things I've ever seen the Supreme Court do (which is saying something). There is no principled basis to distinguish the Fed from other independent agencies. The conservative justices just don't want Trump to crash the market!