lender of last resort

It looks like the ECB is about to step forward and engage in quantitative easing, if reports from the German media are to be believed. I am sceptical that the ECB will follow through on this given political pressure in the euro zone against…

In Paul Krugman’s view, banks are not very important since all they do is to intermediate between savers and investors, taking in deposits and packaging them into loans. Now, I know that Krugman’s own specialty is not money and banking, so…

Many observers are confused. They cry for the ECB to "man up" and "do what it is supposed to do" and be the lender of last resort. It does have that function for banks, not for sovereigns. The lender of last resort to sovereigns is the…

Marshall Auerback was on Fox Business talking about the European sovereign debt crisis. He said he is very concerned not just about the national solvency problem in the euro zone but also about the debt deflationary policy remedies now…

“Without consumption, markets are going to shrink. Companies won’t invest, stores will close, “for rent” signs will spread on the main streets and local tax revenues will fall. Companies will lay off their employees and the economy will…

The EZ crisis is approaching a tipping point beyond which market panic and slow government reaction threaten to create a generation-defining loss of jobs, savings, and pensions. This open letter to the president of the German central bank…

Former bank of England central banker and present Citigroup Chief Economist Willem Buiter spoke to Tom Keene this morning on Bloomberg Radio. His view is similar to mine, that Europe must act now to avoid a default. He believes we could…

This phrase 'lender of last resort' has been bandied around by people who, it seems to me, have no idea what lender of last resort actually means, to be perfectly honest. It is very clear from its origin that lender of last resort by a…

Yesterday, I showed you that contagion had spread and default probabilities were blowing out right across Europe. Every single name on the list for sovereign credit default wideners was European and names like Austria, Estonia, and Slovakia…

The escalation of the European debt crisis and mounting evidence of new economic contraction has increased the scrutiny on the region. Yet it seems like many observers may be failing to grasp several important points, including the nature…