The Decline and Fall of the Euro?
Gros, Daniel. Great empires rarely succumb to outside attacks. But they often crumble under the weight of internal dissent. This vulnerability seems to apply to the eurozone as well. Key macroeconomic indicators do not suggest any problem for the eurozone as a whole. On the contrary, it has a balanced current account, which means that […]
Happy 2012?
Wyplosz, Charles. Another year, and the Eurozone crisis lingers on. This column asks why, and discusses what can be done. It proposes a solution that can be achieved without the pain of a new EU treaty. Πηγή: Voxeu πλήρες κείμενο
Keynesophobia
Krugman, Paul. Dean Baker is once again justifiably mad at Robert Samuelson. It is indeed frustrating that after three years in which Keynesian predictions have been spectacularly correct, pundits insist on reading the evidence as a rejection of Keynes. Πηγή: The New York Times πλήρες κείμενο
A Bridge to Nowhere
Eichengreen, Barry. The task of officials at last week’s EU summit in Brussels can be likened to building a bridge. The fiscal and structural adjustments required of Europe’s heavily indebted economies will take time to complete. Time will be needed in Italy to get parliamentary agreement on new taxes and even more time to begin […]
Can Italy survive the financial storm?
Gros, Daniel. If Italy is too big to fail and too big to save, how can it save itself? This column suggests a survival strategy. The Italian households should finance their own government by buying its debt, and the ECB should prevent a collapse of the Italian banking system. Πηγή: Voxeu πλήρες κείμενο
Chronic Confusion
Krugman, Paul. A quick note — I’ve seen several news reports in the past few days asserting that the structural problems of southern Europe have caused “chronic” trade deficits. Like the notion that all of the troubled countries were fiscally irresponsible, this is a morality-play falsehood that keeps being stated as a fact by reporters […]
All roads lead to Frankfurt: the results of an enigmatic summit
Emmanouilidis, Janis. The 8-9 December European Council was not the ‘major breakthrough’ many had hoped for in the run-up to this crunch meeting of EU leaders: it is not likely to go down in history as the meeting which turned the tide, and the EU is destined to remain in ‘crisis mode’ for some time […]
The ECB Fear Factor
Legrain, Philippe. Panic is beginning to overwhelm the eurozone. Italy and Spain are caught in the maelstrom. Belgium is slipping into the danger zone. As France is dragged down, the widening gap between its bond yields and Germany’s is severely testing the political partnership that has driven six decades of European integration. Πηγή: Project Syndicate […]
The eurozone and the streetlamp syndrome
Pisani-Ferry, Jean. The world was looking for a watershed in Europe. There was one at the European summit last week, but not the one expected: Britain’s isolation on treaty reform was a defining event for the future of Europe, but the agreement to rescue the euro fell short of setting the foundations for stability and […]
A Summit to the Death
O’Rourke, Kevin. As many feared and most expected, the just-concluded European summit left much to be desired. Once again, Europe’s national leaders showed themselves to be in denial about what underlies the eurozone’s economic, banking, and sovereign-debt crises, and thus hopelessly unable to resolve them. Πηγή: Project Syndicate πλήρες κείμενο