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The Commission on Portugal: Is This for Real?
A quick note on Portugal. Let’s start from three facts: Austerity did not work. Portugal is in a recessionary cycle. The economy will shrink by 2.3 per cent this year, more than twice as much as the...
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Supporting Aggregate Demand in Fiscally Constrained Economies
In the past weeks I have argued at length that the eurozone is in recession because of a strong contraction of aggregate demand; and that in spite of this fact the overall fiscal stance is...
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Parallel Universes
So, on today’s FT the German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble forcefully argued that Europe is on the right track, that austerity is paying off, and that “Despite what the critics of the European...
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Look who’s Gloomy
Wolfgang Munchau has an excellent piece on today’s Financial Times, where he challenges the increasingly widespread (and unjustified) optimism about the end of the EMU crisis. The premise of the piece...
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Greek Tragedies, 2014 Edition
Last week’s publication of a Lancet article1 on the effect of austerity on Greek public health made a lot of noise (for those who know Italian, I suggest reading the excellent Barbara Spinelli, in La...
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Wrong Debates
Paul Krugman has a short post on the Eurozone, today (I’d like him to write more about us; he has been too America-centered lately), pointing out that the myth of fiscal profligacy is, well, just a...
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The Confidence Witch
Remember the old times? Here is a quote from ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet, September 2nd, 2010: [Fiscal Consolidation] is a prerequisite for maintaining confidence in the credibility of...
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What Structural Reforms?
I am ready to bet that the latest IMF World Economic Outlook, that was presented today in Washington, will make a certain buzz for a box. It is box 3.5, at page 36 of chapter 3, which has been...
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Draghi the Fiscal Hawk
We are becoming accustomed to European policy makers’ schizophrenia, so when yesterday during his press conference Mario Draghi mentioned the consolidating recovery while announcing further easing in...
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The Quest for Discretionary Fiscal Policy
It is nice to resume blogging after a quite hectic Fall semester. Things do not seem to have gotten better in the meantime… The EMU policy debate in the past few months kept revolving around monetary...
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