austerity

The full statement from the EU without commentary

This post is a prelude to a BBC interview on the sovereign debt crisis. I am not going to answer financial Armageddon questions about "what oif it all goes pear-shaped" here because to understand where things are headed you need to know how…

Guilio Tremonti, the Italian Finance Minister, last week compared Germany and its small-minded Chancellor Angela Merkel to a first-class passenger on the Titanic. To repeat: this is not a problem confined to the periphery. The sovereign…

The sense that America’s spending is out of control is visceral. It will be cut. Looking for a job, running a business or Investing in a world of austerity is a lot different from getting along in normal times. I advise everyone to think…

If you are an investor, businessperson or employee, what you care about is outcomes. You want to know what’s likely to happen in the economy and in the markets. That is what this site is all about. What I see says that cuts were coming.…

The research presented below from the IMF from October 2010 "finds that fiscal consolidation typically reduces output and raises unemployment in the short term. At the same time, interest rate cuts, a fall in the value of the currency, and…

I flagged the inevitability of deficit fatigue as early as November 2008. I am sympathetic to the view that these deficits are an attempt to prop up excess credit growth and thus retard full recovery. But I also fear the consequences of a…

Tom Ferguson gives a comprehensive view of the politicss of the European sovereign debt crisis.

My hope is that, despite slowing in Europe and China, the global economy will have enough pop to get the US through its experiment with expansionary fiscal contraction. But this is just a hope.

The following is an outline for a proposed new Greek government bond issue to provide all required medium term euro funding for Greece on very attractive terms. The new bond issue includes an addition to the default provisions that…