Pinchas Landau writes about Israeli and Global economics, finance and politics
July 26, 2019
Boris Johnson’s arrival in Downing Street opens a new chapter in the seemingly endless Brexit saga – but it solves none of the fundamental issues threatening the very existence of the political entity known as the United Kingdom.
July 8, 2019
This issue is a direct continuation of the previous one, devoted to developments in domestic politics – despite the fact that the general public, which saw no reason to have another election, has shown no interest in the campaign to date Indeed, there is very little substance to generate interest. Yet nevertheless the wheels turn, decisions are made, party leaders rise and fall and the wider political process moves ahead.
June 2, 2019
The Israeli general election of April 9th generated two key outcomes. One was the arithmetical result, in terms of how many votes each party received and how many Knesset seats these votes translated into. That was the focus of the bulletin of April 14th, entitled “Plus ça change”. The second was the political result, in which Binyamin Netanyahu won far more votes than predicted and thereby achieved a more dominant position than ever within Likud and the Israeli political arena.
March 10, 2019
Bottom line: The surplus in Israel’s current account for October-December 2018 jumped to $4.19bn, one of the highest-ever quarterly surpluses. But don’t get carried away by this good news. The rise was overwhelmingly due to a massive $1.14bn surplus on primary income (see definition below) – by far the largest-ever surplus on this component, which usually posts a deficit. It is doubtful if this can be repeated and it may even be revised down in the future. Other than that, the picture was mixed, but the $500m decline in the surplus on trade in services is a negative, especially for the fourth quarter when this surplus usually posts a strong rise.
February 26, 2019
There is a plethora of topics to write about — more than has been the case in quite a few years. The most obvious and seemingly urgent is the political arena and the election campaign underway. In that area, however, I am primarily using verbal communication channels — conference calls and individual conversations — if only because the pace of events is so rapid that written analysis suffers from almost instant obsolescence.