euroscepticism

Earlier today I wrote a post on the free blog site about blaming Germany for the problems in the euro zone. I ended up defending the German political response and blaming the euro. Let me just add a bit of colour to that here.

The European Union is an existential crisis because its crowning achievement, the single currency, has come under assault from all sides. The continued existence of the Euro has even been called into question as country after country within…

This post is extracted from my newsletter sent out four weeks ago, at a time when the mood in Europe was much better than now and when there was even a sense that the crisis was in the process of being resolved. I mention this to remind…

Handelsblatt's Italian correspondent Katharina Kort had an exclusive interview with Italian politician Beppe Grillo about his ideas for change in Italian politics. The article is in German. However, I have read it and wanted to present a…

In the links this morning, I linked to a Handelsblatt interview with the head of Austria's social democratic EU parliamentarians. The overall gist of his comments were that he believed the EU budget was 'catastrophic' because it was in…

Early today, I wrote a fairly upbeat piece on the European sovereign debt crisis for gold members. The overall gist here is that fiscal union is now coming. And while it remains to be seen who will be a part of that union, the implication…

The following is an excerpt of an article written exactly twenty years ago on 8 October 1992 by the late Wynne Godley, a British economist, who predicted disaster for Europe’s planned single currency. This is the single most cogent and…

A recent story in German magazine Der Spiegel highlights the efforts in 2005 of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to relax the penalties for deficits in breach of the euro zone's stability and growth pact. It is a good review of the…

This will be a bronze level post. Everyone is talking about the Dutch Freedom Party these days. Geert Wilders, the head of the Freedom Party, is a bit like Marine Le Pen in terms of his appeal: anti-immigrant, nationalist and right wing. He…

The British decision to veto the proposed new EU treaty is not surprisingly provoking an avalanche of commentary this weekend. Among journalists, at least, there seems to be a consensus that David Cameron committed some kind of major…