austerity

Backloaded austerity is the defining paradigm at work in Europe right now. Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta has called for this paradigm to be bolstered by fiscal stimulus incentives as a quid pro quo for structural reform. I believe he…

What follows is an interview I did over the summer with the Madrid based publication The Local.

Despite the grandiose title of this post, I intend to keep my comments brief. Having had a few days to digest the news without having to write, I come back somewhat more optimistic about the European economy. I wouldn't call myself a bull…

I continue to anticipate a recovery in Europe in the second half of this year. The manufacturing PMI data that were released this morning suggest we could be in recovery before the end of the quarter. This makes me relatively upbeat about…

Remember how French President Hollande was saying a month ago that the euro crisis is over? Well, he was wrong. Today portugal's yields on 10-year paper vaulted to as high as 7.9% before settling back down again.

This is an article that originally ran early this month at VoxEU by the Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund and one of his researchers that make the case now being used in Europe for the current policy mix.

As I have ben predicting here for months, the problems in individual large European economies have become to large to bear for the prevailing European policy mix. Therefore, today, in releasing the next year's country specifici…

I have two topics I want to highlight this morning. First, there are the US housing inflation numbers from Case Shiller, which are at a 7-year high. Then there is the fiscal drag in the US, Denmark, the UK, the Euro Zone and Canada. What I…

Last year, we saw a sea change in official German policy regarding the euro crisis and inflation. The German government came out in favour of accepting higher inflation domestically in Germany as a sacrifice for eurozone wage and price…

Europe's GDP numbers have just been released today and they are miserable. They show the Netherlands and France in recession along with the rest of the periphery. And even outside the euro zone, we got some pretty dire numbers out of the…