Politics

UMKC Economics head Stephanie Kelton was on Chris Hayes' show to talk about US fiscal politics along with three other guests. They discuss the political gridlock in the US and what it means for the economy.

In mid-January I had said I expected a recession in Q2 as a result of austerity and a government shutdown in the US. Recently, however, I have moved away from that position as a baseline, largely because of the rebound in housing and the…

A reader of our blog here at Credit Writedowns recently wrote to me, detailing why Italians voted as they did in the recent general election. Her view speaks more to a rejection of corporatism and corruption than austerity.

News links for 26 February 2013

The situation needless to say is very fluid and although the euro has stabilized, the threat to euro area stability is clearly evident in the debt markets where Italy's 10-year yields has soared 32 bp and the spread over Germany has widened…

Here are 10 items that investors will be watching this week.

Recent Bulgarian developments are worth discussing. Austerity just brought down another European government, as Prime Minister Borisov and his cabinet resigned this week amidst rising popular protests against his policies. But the story…

The best chances of balancing a strong government with a reform agenda also looks the most likely. It is the center-left winning the Chamber of Deputies and then forming a coalition with Monti's centrists to secure a majority in the…

The much-touted European banking union, designed to separate country and banking risk seen as the nexus around which the sovereign debt crisis has moved, looks weak.

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…