debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
In a recent post I had an imaginary interviewer asking “But surely no government can keep on borrowing more forever.” To which my suggested reply was “Of course not. But the right time to cut government borrowing is when the economy is strong, and the cost of borrowing is high.” This prompted a little discussion in comments about [...]
The Euro is a noble political project that was mis-designed. If it falls apart it will inflict massive economic dislocation and destroy the political vision of five decades. It cannot be allowed to fail, but its flaws are too severe for it to persist in its present form. The consequences of mis-design are manifest in [...]
The results of the Greek elections have seen the success of New Democracy and the formation of a Government keen to commit to the full implementation of the bailout programme with some minor revisions, possibly allowed by the Troika. However, besides expressing satisfaction for the outcome of the elections, EU leaders should recognise the need [...]
The outcome of the ECB meeting yesterday was rather more positive than I had hoped. Why? Because the decision to do nothing was not unanimous. That’s it I’m afraid, but my expectations beforehand were very low. One reason was reading this short speech by Jörg Asmussen, a member of the Executive Board of the ECB. [...]
I spent the second half of last week at the conference of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) in Berlin. The central policy topic was – of course – again the euro-crisis. While the vast majority of speakers agreed that the crisis was much more than a simple fiscal solvency crisis (in contrast to what sometimes [...]
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