Political Economy

European economies are really breaking down and panic has set in. You see pointless proposals to lord over supposed fiscal free riders from Finland and unelected governments lacking in political legitimacy and taking unfavourable economic…

With sovereign interest rates in the euro zone rising, Finland is feeling the contagion effect despite being only country in the euro zone except tiny Luxembourg which is both AAA-rated and meets all of the Maastricht Treaty requirements.…

Monetary union was not a good idea, even in the best of circumstances. Time to abandon the failed experiment?

The well known eurosceptic Nigel Farage is having a field day over the sovereign debt crisis in the euro zone. Farage says that the EU lacks democratic legitimacy, a complaint heard ever more often during this crisis. He goes further,…

Pressure is mounting on Spain. The 10-year yield today is essentially back to where it was when the ECB broadened its sovereign bond purchase scheme to include Spanish and Italian bonds. On Oct 27, the 10-year yield was near 5.33%. Today it…

I think Monti and Papademos are going to try to shoehorn the standard policy responses into the situation in order to reduce the range of outcomes they have to deal with. In a practical sense, that means going with the standard formula of…

German central bankers (current and former) continue to voice their hostility to what the financial community now calls a Euro-style Quantitative Easing (aka big bazooka). This talk (by one of the boldest opponents of an ECB solution to the…

We are baffled by the analysis of the analyst community, some, of which, are not so analytical. They say that Europe’s fundamental problem is that it has a central bank which is unwilling to monetize sizeable debt maturities which…

In case you missed it last night here is one that is sure to get your feathers up. It’s about time they Occupy Congress.

Gallup reports that Congress' job approval is entrenched at a record low of 13%. Here’s what I noticed, however.