In the wake of the impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, the international left has been calling her impeachment “undemocratic.” 

A typical example comes from the left-wing think tank called the Council on Hemispheric Affairs:

It has now become clear that in many ways the European Union is a cartel of high-tax governments whose goal is to restrain tax competition. The EU’s supposedly free — this is, regulated — trade policy is none other than an excuse to homogenize the tax and regulatory regimes of the nation-states.

You have probably heard of the controversial TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the deal that Hillary Clinton can’t make up her mind on. However, you probably have not heard of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). It is referred to as a free trade pact between the United States and the European Union. I only recently read about it in European media sources.

Last week it emerged that, for the second time in two weeks, the Bank of England has been unable to buy back enough government bonds to achieve its target. The attempted bond buyback was part of the Bank’s post-Brexit emergency strategy, in which it hoped to execute £60 billion of new quantitative easing (QE) by re-purchasing UK Treasury gilts from private businesses.

One of the most important concepts in economic theory is the quantity of money. However, when going from theory to practical application, things get messy. In the real world, it’s not obvious how to count up the amount of “money” in the economy at any given time.

In 2011, then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, dubbed “Big Sis” by Matt Drudge, unleashed a “See Something, Say Something” campaign to encourage Americans to report “suspicious” activity to the Federal government.

Now it is official: Dilma Rousseff is no longer Brazil’s president. After almost two years of waiting, the country’s senate approved her impeachment. I will try to make here a brief summary of what happened, and write down some of my expectations for Brazil’s near political future.

The details of Brazilian law and Rousseff’s trial can get somewhat complicated, but the basics are that she spent public money she was legally not supposed to, most likely with electoral purposes.

Robert E. Lucas Jr. won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1995 for one of the most celebrated contributions in modern macroeconomics: the Lucas Critique.

The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve system launched a new Facebook page last week, and UPI reports that the Fed’s posts on the new page were not met with universal approval: 

The page has gained more than 13,000 likes but has been flooded with critical and sarcastic comments, starting from its very first post.

Apple Inc., the US corporate parent of dozens of foreign legal entities, has been hit with a $14.6 billion tax bill by a commission of the European Union. At the heart of the commission’s complaint is an alleged antitrust violation rather than a tax dispute per se: Apple is accused of negotiating a sweetheart arrangement with Ireland, in exchange for creating thousands of new jobs there.