As governments outdo each other to cut their budgets, one area that ought to be ripe for pruning is defence. After all, the combined EU member states defence spending is 200 billion euros, the second largest in the world after the USA. Room then, one would think, for big savings. Naturally, defence is a very [...]
Economic Crisis Provides Opportunity for Greater ‘Europeanisation’ of Defence Spending
30/06/2010 by
McChrystal’s Replacement Marks the End of the ‘Big Macs’ in Afghanistan
29/06/2010 by
In a spectacular move President Obama fired General Stanley McChrystal after the Rolling Stone magazine broke a story reporting his staff’s and his own disrespectful remarks about the president and his national security team. The incident is not only meat for the tireless hosts of cable news shows; it also represents another chapter in the [...]
Ten Commandments for Fiscal Adjustment in Advanced Economies
29/06/2010 by
The G20 communiqué stresses the difficulty of balancing fiscal stimulus and fiscal consolidation. This column – written by one of the world’s leading macroeconomists, Olivier Blanchard, and his co-author – sums up the research-based policy analysis of the issue. Advanced economies are facing the difficult challenge of implementing fiscal adjustment strategies without undermining a still-fragile [...]
Nick Clegg’s Economic Illiteracy
28/06/2010 by
Speaking to John Humphrys on the Today programme a few days ago (24 June), Nick Clegg sounded particularly uncomfortable dealing with the verdict of the Institute of Fiscal Studies that the budget would hit the poor harder than the rich. But Clegg’s economic illiteracy revealed itself most clearly when he declared that the budget pain [...]
From Rudd to Gillard – Why the Australian Leadership has changed
25/06/2010 by
This week (on 24 June 2010) the governing Australian Labor Party (ALP) took the unprecedented step of removing a first term Prime Minister as Leader of the Party. Kevin Rudd, who in November 2007 triumphantly led Labor back into government after 11 years in opposition, and who for his first two years kept Labor comfortably [...]
Germany’s Europe Deficit
24/06/2010 by
Germany used to be at the heart of European integration. Its statesmen used to assert that Germany had no independent foreign policy, only a European policy. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, its leaders realized that German reunification was possible only in the context of a united Europe, and they were willing to make [...]
Keynes and Social Democracy
22/06/2010 by
For decades, Keynesianism was associated with social democratic big-government policies. But John Maynard Keynes’s relationship with social democracy is complex. Although he was an architect of core components of social democratic policy – particularly its emphasis on maintaining full employment – he did not subscribe to other key social democratic objectives, such as public ownership [...]
Europe’s Policymakers are rushing towards the Edge of the Cliff
21/06/2010 by
Lemmings are cute, family-oriented, apparently well-adjusted creatures who, most of the time, live more or less happily in the tundra. Although it is an urban myth that they commit collective suicide to control population, they certainly experience periodic mass frenzies. Driven by some deeply rooted instinctive yearning, they swarm off in search of salvation, looking [...]
Eurozone Governance: What went wrong and how to repair it
17/06/2010 by
The crisis has revealed deep flaws in the Eurozone’s governance regime. This essay argues that EU leaders should address fundamental questions about the operational principles upon which the euro is based. Key choices for Eurozone leaders are the nature of the economic policy framework, the optimal degree of decentralisation, and the identification of reforms that [...]
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