Category: The Landau Report

“Hummbling’ is a term I invented for the specific purpose of describing the current state of the Israeli economy. It has nothing to do with modesty or other personal traits, but rather represents a hybrid form of ‘humming’ and ‘bumbling’ – hence the double m. You would think that to simultaneously hum along whilst bumbling around would be very difficult, […]

This issue is devoted entirely to Section A: Regional Developments and has as its main focus and premise that it is the changes in America’s involvement in the Middle East that are driving developments across the region. The most recent and dramatic of these changes has been the announcement of the opening to Tehran, a move which has been at […]

This issue is devoted to a topic that has increasingly occupied me over the last two years or more, since the social protest movement swept Israel during the summer of 2011. I call it ‘the New Nasty’, because its central feature is the overt antipathy displayed toward the group of big businessmen who are perceived as dominating the Israeli economy, […]

This issue has been delayed quite a while by health problems – I had to have an eye operation — but thank God that is largely behind me now and I hope to get clearance soon to fly abroad, in which case I look forward to seeing many of you in London next month. Meanwhile, much has happened on many […]

This issue was intended to discuss the current agenda in both Section A: Regional Developments and in Section C: Macro-economics. However, the central item on the economic policy agenda, namely the budget for 2013-2014, is held up by lack of agreement between Finance Minister Yair Lapid and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, between Lapid and the Treasury top brass and by […]

No-one who follows the Israeli markets can have been surprised yesterday (Monday, April 8), when the Bank of Israel intervened in the foreign currency market. The intervention came after the shekel/ dollar rate dropped below 3.60, with the central bank quickly making an official announcement confirming that it had bought $100mn. Indeed, had this intervention not followed the breaching of […]