debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
The recent joint economic forecast by the IMK, WiFO and OFCE is now available in English (see the link on the right; auf deutsch hier). I should warn you: it makes miserable reading. While the extraordinary measures by the ECB and the shoring up of the European bail-out fund have averted a meltdown, the institutes [...]
The National Institute of Social and Economic Research (NIESR) uses the term ‘depression’ to mean any period in which output remains below its previous peak. [1] The UK depression has already lasted three years and is likely to last five years or more; ie, longer than that of 1930s.[2] Not only must Osborne’s Plan A [...]
Two new papers clearly show that contractionary fiscal policy is indeed contractionary. Coming from the IMF and from an economist who had previously co-authored a paper often cited by those claiming that fiscal contractions could, in contrast, be expansionary, they are going to be hard to shake off. The bottom line is that all those [...]
That there is a crisis of Social Democracy in Europe is not in doubt. The question is whether it is terminal. The symptoms are worrying. In Vienna, home city a century ago to anti-semitic, brownshirt politcs, 27 per cent of voters supported the extremism of the late and unlamented Jorg Haider’s party in the autumn [...]
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