Political Economy

Developments in the Netherlands may steal the limelight as the French election is still more than a month away. The key issue in the Netherlands is that last week, the Dutch Bureau of Economic Policy Analysis warned that next year's deficit…

Will Germany lose its best friend in the Upright Brigade? And if so, will this encourage Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain etc. to question Germany-encouraged austerity policies? Spain’s prime minister has already said that the…

This is a silver level post. Spain is now fessing up that its going to miss 2012 targets as well as its 2011 deficit targets. For Credit Writedowns readers, this should come as no shock because I predicted this months ago. Here's the…

The devolution in Spain is particularly troubling. The new fiscal compact had just been signed last week, which includes somewhat more rigorous fiscal rule and enforcement, when Spain's PM Rajoy revealed that this year's deficit would come…

The enduring global crisis is giving rise to fears that economic hard times will feed political extremism, as it did in the 1930s. This column suggests that the danger of political polarisation and extremism is greatest in countries with…

The financial plan is basically an asset grab. They want to load the whole economy down with debt. A consumer will come in and say, I’d like to take out a loan. They’ll say, how much do you earn? Everything over subsistence they’ll want as…

We (also) do not want black helicopters flying around dropping bags of cash; and we (also) oppose government “pump-priming” demand stimulus—the libertarians and Austrians and even Milton Friedman are correct in their argument that this…

In this piece Variant Perception looks at the mechanics of a currency breakup and how it would happen. This piece is longer than most of their pieces and is a slightly more wonkish piece than usual, but the first two pages provide a summary…

Consider the statements by the UK leadership that the UK has "run out of money." Does anyone think that the UK financial leaders believe that statement? If Germany declared war on the UK tomorrow would the UK surrender because it had "run…

By Edward Hugh It’s been a long time now since Paul Krugman spoke of the Ukraine economy epitomising the arrival of what he then termed the “second great depression“, and its been an even longer long time since we lay awake at night…