Tag: Europe

Angela Merkel fades into irrelevancy Their compact—now called the “treaty on stability, co-ordination and governance in the Economic and Monetary Union”, has as its main aim the imposition of balanced-budget rules on members. This may be a useful discipline in good times. But many worry that, at a time of…

Spain’s economy is sliding back into recession.  Nobody is surprised. PARIS — To no one’s surprise, the Spanish economy is sliding toward recession, official data showed Monday, contracting in the fourth quarter after a stagnant third quarter. Gross domestic product shrank by 0.3 percent in the October-December period from the…

Or Italy, or Ireland, or Portugal or now even France.  No… We’re not like them at all.  Anyone who tells you that we are is either lying to you or is too stupid to understand why the United States (like the UK) is in a much different circumstance.  We are…

You might have heard that the S&P downgraded several European nations this week.  What you probably didn’t hear was why.  Hidden in the appendix of the downgrade report is this gem. In our opinion, the political agreement does not supply sufficient additional resources or operational flexibility to bolster European rescue operations, or…

One of the qualitative features of Modern Monetary Theory is that nations that have their own sovereign currency are not subject to the same constraints of countries that use another nation’s currency.  A quick look at France and Britain and the reaction of France to a threatened sovereign debt downgrade…

We all know that Paul Krugman can be acerbic… Rude even.  But the staid Martin Wolf?  Apparently he’s found his Inner Krugman.

Paul Krugman (who I often refer to as Krugsandra for his prescient though often ignored predictions) has a doom-and-gloom OpEd in The New York Times this morning.  

Nobody could have predicted…

In last night’s “debate,” Mitt Romney was asked what he’d do about Italy’s debt were they to default (and by extension, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and France as well).  His answer? Same one he gave to the auto industry.  Let them eat cake.

Did you know that it wasn’t until October 2010 that Germany finally paid of the last of its Versailles Treaty obligations from 1919 closing the books on World War I?