Politics

These are the words of European Commission President José Manuel Barroso in a recent interview with Die Welt, a German newspaper. Rather than translate this article in full, I want to put it in context given Barroso's outburst about…

I have been trying to break up the links posts because I have so many. So I have been writing brief theme posts to go with the links as I used to do when I had more time. I want to make this one short here and I have two topics to…

The first left-right coalition in Italy since 1946 has survived its first confidence motion in both chambers. As difficult as it may have been to break the political logjam, the hard work lies ahead for Prime Minister Letta.

Italy's new Prime Minister Enrico Letta is touted as a man who could change the politics of the EU. The Daily Telegraph in the UK even headlines his initial policy speech as "Italian PM Enrico Letta urges move from austerity to growth". But…

A recent FT article points out that the electoral campaign positioning has already started. And it has the Social Democrats in bed with the Green Party to an unusual degree. The way the Greens and the SPD are talking makes me believe it…

Osborne has said in the past that his austerity approach is the right one and has pointed to a 2010 paper on government debt and growth by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff as evidence his approach is the right one. Given the recent furore…

Italy is getting closer to putting together a grand coalition government. This has always seemed to us the most likely scenario, but the route to it has been circuitously torturous. Three considerations have led to President Napolitano…

The overarching theme here is that the economy of Europe is in tatters and this is causing a re-think of the policy course. In my view, the political space for the re-think is limited and will ultimately entail some tacked on growth…

I hate to sound like a broken record here, but I believe the anti-austerians have it all wrong about the politics of austerity. Everywhere I look, there is some analysis that takes the statements of policy makers and big investors as…

Reinhart-Rogoff’s paper has more serious flaws than an excel error. And austerity hysteria will not go away after Herndon-Ash-Pollin’s review. This is my message to you.