Politics

Last week, in framing the Greek elections, I reminded you that irrespective of who won the elections in Greece on Sunday, it was clear that Greece would be unable to hit their deficit targets. This is why the German government is already…

The US pension bailout fund PBGC is already stretched and may require more taxpayer money. Now it would be taking over pensions that will be even more underfunded, with asset values way below the present value of the liabilities. And more…

I would submit then that the problem is the debt. This is true right across the developed economies. Until the debt is reduced, global growth will be slow and that makes economies susceptible to recession. As much as the President wants to…

It is clear that Greece will be unable to hit their deficit targets. According to Die Zeit, Greece is already lagging on tax revenues and privatization proceeds. This is why the German government is already debating relaxing Greece’s…

Right now Syriza is neck and neck with New Democracy in Greece for the upcoming elections in Greece. So it is worthwhile to take a look at what Syriza is actually saying and what the consequences of their program would be. I have a copy of…

From a game theory perspective, the moment one of the 17 eurozone member countries realises it would be better off outside the eurozone, it has everything to gain from being the first mover. We have all been led to believe that a break-up…

This is a belated commentary for Friday. I have a lot of links on the global growth slowdown today but I covered this earlier saying Weak global economic data signal likelihood of global recession. I wanted to highlight Marshall Auerback's…

We are now in another existential crisis for the euro zone with yields on sovereign debt from Spain and Italy spiking well over 6%. We have been here before, most recently in November. Then, it was Italy in Spain's position as the lead…

The European fiscal compact which calls for EU countries to stay within the Maastricht treaty government deficit hurdle of 3% of GDP has already been signed off on by all 27 EU governments except the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic.…

The EU informal summit will be held over a dinner and despite the attention it is receiving, it still seems unreasonable to expect anything concrete. Today's informal EU summit is not the real thing. It is out of the late June summit that a…