Category: The Landau Report

January 16, 2017
I will admit, with some pride, that this newsletter is now in its twenty-first year. As I often say to prospective subscribers, if highly intelligent people are still paying to read it, it must be answering a need and I must be doing something right.

January 4, 2017

The Christmas-New Year holiday season is rarely marked by good cheer in the Middle East, let alone peace and goodwill. Yet even given this unhappy norm, the end of 2016 has been characterised by unusually intense activity on almost every front.

October 6, 2016
This issue is focused on the very wide and multi-faceted topic of Israel-US relations. Always a valid topic, it is especially germane now after the recent signing of a new, ten-year agreement regarding US military aid to Israel — and ahead of the election of a new president.

August 24, 2016
This issue has one focus, namely the government budget. However, in order to explain the extraordinary phenomenon of the biennial, or two-year, budget that is being legislated, I have delved into the weird and wonderful history of this Israeli invention, which dates back all the way to 2009. Like most things first employed in economic policy during and after the global financial crisis, no-one would have believed that this ad hoc and emergency measure would take on a life of its own and becoming a semi-permanent fixture of economic management. Yet here we are, with the most carefully-planned version of a biennial budget yet to be attempted.

July 1, 2016

Along with the rest of the world, the Israeli public looks on, stunned and disbelieving, at the events in the UK. Along with the rest of the world’s governing and administrative elite, the Israeli Establishment follows the implosion of the British political system, horrified and mortified.

April 2, 2016
This issue reviews both the current strength of the Israeli economy and the problems facing it.

The current strength is the ‘good news’ part of the story, especially since the economy performed better in 2015 than had been expected and because the main positive developments came in the latter part of the year and seem to be extending into 2016. That makes the first part of the analysis — “Jam today” — a smooth and pleasant ride.

Problems are, by definition, less pleasant