Tag Archives: EU

And particularly in Europe, as this chart shows: The ratings agency Standard & Poors has called for governments everywhere to increase investment spending. It also says they need to improve the efficiency of the spending they are already doing.  Private sector investment spending all over the world fell after the 2008 financial crisis. In Europe, where the crisis started earlier, it started falling in 2007. And it has not recovered. Private sector investors remain risk-averse and...

I am temporarily departing from my usual finance & economics slant to write about something that I consider utterly shameful: the response of European countries, including my own, to the refugee crisis on their borders.This photo was taken on the Macedonian border today: : Herbert Mayrhofr tweeted this with a comment, "This is not the Europe that I want to live in".I wholeheartedly agree. What kind of society is it that will threaten toddlers with police batons?Many argue that Europe...

Guest post by Sigrún DavídsdóttirThe word “trust” has been mentioned time and again in reports on the tortuous negotiations on Greece. One reason is the persistent deceit in reporting on debt and deficit statistics, including lying about an off market swap with Goldman Sachs: not a one-off deceit but a political interference through concerted action among several public institutions for more then ten years.As late as in the July 12 Euro Summit statement "safeguarding of the full legal...

The atmosphere in the Greek standoff is turning ugly. On Tuesday, after new Greek finance minister Euclid Tsakalotos turned up to Eurogroup talks with nothing but hastily-drafted notes written on hotel paper, Eurozone leaders told the Greek government in no uncertain terms that if it did not produce credible proposals by Sunday 12th July Greece would be thrown out of the Eurozone. "We have a Grexit scenario prepared in detail", said European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.The...

It appears that the Greeks have given a bloody nose to the EU, turning in a resounding NO vote in Sunday's referendum. Though exactly what they have rejected is unclear. The ballot paper is, to say the least, complicated. The UK's Telegraph published this translation from Greek Analyst:The ballot paper of the #greferendum question upon which the Greek people are called to vote on. (Translated) pic.twitter.com/hPGJcp49Gs— The Greek Analyst (@GreekAnalyst) June 29, 2015 And the paper asked,...

Hans Werner Sinn has apost on Project Syndicate which purports to explain why the plans of Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis are much cleverer than anyone has realised. I don’t disagree that Mr. Varoufakis’s plans are clever: indeed I have written several posts on Forbes explaining just how clever they are. But Professor Sinn’s explanation, sadly, is very wide of the mark. Here is Professor Sinn’s description of Mr. Varofakis’s strategy: Plan B comprises two key elements. First, there...

The final paragraphs of Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras's op-ed in Le Monde read thus:Europe, therefore, is at a crossroads. Following the serious concessions made by the Greek government, the decision is now not in the hands of the institutions, which in any case – with the exception of the European Commission- are not elected and are not accountable to the people, but rather in the hands of Europe’s leaders.Which strategy will prevail? The one that calls for a Europe of...

This is not what you think it is. And it is not what I intended to write about, either. I was going to write about Latvia as it is now, after the deepest recession in the world in 2008-9 and an excruciatingly painful front-loaded fiscal consolidation. Has it really recovered, or is it just marking time?But in looking at Latvia now, I find myself drawn to its history. Latvia's unusual response to the kicking it got in 2008 was because of its history. It had a deep recession 1991-3 and a severe...