John Browne

Given all that stress that the Federal Reserve’s currency debasement program is laying on the global economy, last week’s G-20 summit in South Korea should have been the monetary equivalent of a military degradation for the U.S. dollar. The greenback...

With our economy sagging and our international clout waning, one of the few assets upon which the United States can rely is the confidence that the rest of the world has traditionally showered upon us. That confidence is the reason why the US dollar was elevated to...

This week, desperation became palpable at the Fed. In both the formulaic statement that accompanied its FOMC policy decision and Chairman Ben Bernanke’s unusual (and clumsy) Washington Post op-ed follow up, the guardians of our currency expressed grave...

Last weekend, the G-20 finance ministers met in South Korea to find areas of agreement in preparation for the main G-20 gathering in November. The Chinese rebuffed renewed American pleas for them to revalue their yuan. They rejected Secretary Geithner’s...

As the recession and resultant stimulus packages add to higher unemployment and increasing public-sector deficits, the government is seeking to boost the value of overseas earnings that are accrued by US corporations. To aid in this effort, the Fed is being...

Over the last two weeks, seemingly good economic news offered some shreds of optimism to a stock market that was desperate for a pick-me-up. The week before last, the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that the US recession had ended back in June 2009....

Since March 2009, the S&P 500 has surged by nearly 60% and US Treasuries have continued to surge, pushing yields close to all-time lows. This has elicited sighs of relief from professional investors, who see the strength as sure signs of recovery. Yet, these...

At long last, a good portion of mainstream economists now concede that a ‘double dip’ recession is in the cards for the United States. To head off the pain, sixteen top economists addressed an open letter to the President urging him to...

Despite several quarters of rising GDP, and the upbeat exertions of Administration spokespeople, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has yet to announce the recession is over. Their reluctance is well-founded. It is beginning to dawn on even the...

Last week, global attention was focused on Toronto as the G-20 gathered to confront the growing financial and economic worries darkening the global economic horizon. In an irony worthy of Orwell, the representatives of the world’s top 20 economies (19 countries...

The global financial crisis is playing out like a slow-moving, highly predicable stage play. In the current scene, Western governments are caught between the demands of entitled welfare beneficiaries and the anxiety of bondholders who fear they will be stuck with...

In the arc of history, all great powers have their day. Even confining our glance to the modern era, countries such as Spain, France, and Great Britain all had periods of unrivalled power across the world stage. Today, the United States reigns as the world’s...

Just a few weeks ago, most financial analysts continued to insist that the road to recovery stretched far into the future. Now, uncertainty has returned with a vengeance and the stock market has booked its first official 10% correction since this tenuous...

The European Union’s debt crisis, the threatened collapse of its fledgling ‘euro’ currency, and the uncertainties created by the UK elections may seem very far removed from the American ship of state, but, in reality, this turbulence threatens to...

As the health of much of the global economy weakens on a daily basis, political leadership increasingly ignores the source of the malady and instead focuses on short term “band-aid” remedies. These measures which may buy a few months, or years, of relative...

In the decades that preceded Greece’s adoption of the euro in 2001 the country papered over its chronic inefficiency and lack of competitiveness with its northern neighbors through regular devaluations of its currency, the drachma. But as a prerequisite to join...

From all outward appearances, it seems that a grim chapter in U.S. economic history has come to an end. Newsweek magazine declares that “America is Back,” government statistics indicate revival, and our stock market has put in a rally for the record books...

Much to the relief of jittery global markets, Greece’s chronic debt problem has been papered over in a burst of European solidarity and apparent magnanimity. But this act of mercy may cost Germany its key position of financial dominance over the European Central...

Productive, private-sector jobs – the lifeblood of a sound economy – are under assault by politicians in the United States and Western Europe, who have unwittingly taken a number of steps that make future job losses a foregone conclusion. In the 1980s, as...

The bad news for Greece is that despite some help from abroad, and some attempts at internal reform, investors are still leery of the troubled state. The good news, if you can call it that, is that they will soon have company in the penalty box. Now that investors...

Over two thousand years ago, China began to build its Great Wall in order to keep nomadic tribes and marauding armies from crossing its borders. In the last few decades, China has built another protective barrier, a ‘Great Firewall,’ to keep socially...

Last week, the Dow closed at 10,741, up some 64 percent since its 2009 lows, [03/19/10, Yahoo! Finance] when most markets had priced in the likelihood of financial Armageddon. As the markets have rebounded from the brink of disaster, many Wall Street cheerleaders have...

The world is currently in the eye of an economic hurricane. The leading edge of the storm, which made landfall in the second quarter of 2008, raged until the first quarter of 2009, and nearly demolished the world’s financial system. By sand-bagging with...