Stabilising the Yen: Option Japan Won't Use THE major news currently is that the US dollar's exchange rate has touched 150 Japanese yen. Compared with any of the major currencies of the world, the...
International Economic Affairs
SDR in the Dumps ISG IT is now a little over ten years since it was agreed at Jamaica in January 1976 that the members of the IMF should collaborate in making the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) "the...
Grim Prospect for the Poor ISG WHAT are the economic prospects for the developing countries over the coming few years? Several organisations make these forecasts every year. The IMF is one such...
Cross-Conditionality Fears: Real or Imaginary? ISG CROSS-CONDITIONALITY has come to the fore in recent months with the emergence of increasing concensus that the payments difficulties of the...
World Oil Price Prospects ISG WORLD oil price declined from $ 28 a barrel towards the end of November 1985 to $ 10 a barrel in the last week of April 1986, thus registering a decline of close to two...
A World Monetary Conference, at Last? ISG IN his fifth State of the Union Message to the US Congress, Ronald Reagan announced that he was asking his Treasury Secretary Jim Baker, "to determine if...
Why Fear Free Trade in Services? ISG NOW that it has been agreed that in the preparatory work for the eighth round of global trade negotiations services may also be covered, what sort of issues...
AT the annual IMF/World Bank meeting in Seoul, South Korea, early in October this year, the US Treasury Secretary, James A Baker, outlined a three-pronged approach to the third world debt problem...
Foreign Banks in South Africa ISG "THE banks have accomplished in two weeks what politicians haven't done in years", says the managing director of the Barclays subsidiary in South Africa. The...
Whom Will Union Carbide Blame Now? ISG AFTER the disaster in its pesticides plant in Bhopal, Union Carbide, the American multinational which owns the plant, closed its methyl isocyanate (MIC)...
Making Common Cause with Peru ISG IN taking the oath of office as the newly- elected President of Peru on July 29, Alan Garcia Perez made a major announcement with regard to Peru's external debt. He...
Shadow-Boxing in OPEC ISG TWO very interesting developments have taken place with respect to oil. One is that OPEC was put on notice by Saudi Arabia that the organisation must evolve and establish...
Making Third World Pay for Overvalued Dollar ISG IF dollar has to stay overvalued, let us impose an import surcharge. That is the conclusion of the Morgan Guaranty economists. The US Congress has...
THE Bonn Economic Summit of the industrialised countries of the West has, as we know, been conspicuous for its failure to agree on almost any major issue. It could not agree on the timing and agenda...
Flaws in Locomotive Theory I S G THERE is not much new about the locomotive theory. All that it says is that economic growth in certain countries provides the stimulus to other countries, through...