Levy-Yeyati, Eduardo, (2011), ‘Debt Buybacks and Backdoor Restructurings: Can Greece Pull an Ecuador?’, www.brookings.edu, 29 July. The latest European package includes, as a way to lighten Greece´s heavy debt burden, a debt buyback: the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) would lend the money for Greece to buy back its own bonds in the secondary market at a discount, imposing a loss on private creditors while avoiding an outright default.
A Greek Catch-22
Levy-Yeyati, Eduardo, (2011), ‘A Greek Catch-22‘, www.project-syndicate.org, 27 July. Desperate times bring desperate measures. The latest package to cope with Greece’s insolvency offers a bond buyback to lighten the country’s debt burden. In essence, this is a back-door debt restructuring: Europe’s bailout fund, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) would lend the money for Greece to buy back its own debt in the secondary market at deep discounts, thereby imposing …Read More
Choices for Greece, All of Them Daunting
Cowen, Tyler, (2011), ‘Choices for Greece, All of Them Daunting’, www.nytimes.com, 10 July. Without outside help, Greece is probably insolvent right now. In evaluating the country’s prospects, it’s worth asking what it would take for Greece to pay all of its bills and what kind of damage we might expect along the way.The answers are to be found not only in statistics — like the debt-to-G.D.P. ratio, now running at …Read More
The Real Reboot Greece Needs
Tsoukalis, Loukas, (2011), ‘The Real Reboot Greece Needs’, www.nytimes.com, 22 June. Greece’s prime minister, George A. Papandreou, comfortably survived a confidence vote on Tuesday, momentarily stabilizing his fragile Socialist government and clearing the way for a fresh infusion of financial assistance from the European Union.But the country’s economic crisis, which began at the end of 2009 when the world belatedly realized that Greece’s fiscal and trade deficits were unsustainable, is …Read More
The ECB’s three mistakes in the Greek crisis
Frankel, Jeffrey, (2011), ‘The ECB’s three mistakes in the Greek crisis and how to get sovereign debt right in the future’, www.voxeu.org, 16 May. It is a year since Greece was bailed out by EU and IMF and there are many who label it a failure. This column says that while there is plenty of blame to go around, there were three big mistakes made by the European Central Bank. Number …Read More
Delphic Oracle on Europe
Tsoukalis, Loukas, Emmanouilidis, Janis, (ed) (2011), Delphic Oracle on Europe, London, Oxford University Press. The Delphic Oracle on Europe brings together leading thinkers and policy-makers from different academic disciplines and policy-oriented backgrounds from all over Europe. The chapters reflect on ways forward for the European Union in a time of global crisis and profound change. Contributors debate the institutional and political consequences of the Lisbon Treaty, the reform of economic …Read More
The Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis and EMU: A Failing State in a Skewed Regime
Featherstone, Kevin, (2011), ‘The Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis and EMU: A Failing State in a Skewed Regime’, Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 49, Issue 2, p.p. 193–217. The Greek sovereign debt crisis of 2010 exposed the weaknesses of governance of both the ‘euro area’ and of Greece. Successive governments in Athens had failed to overcome endemic problems of low competitiveness, trade and investment imbalances, and fiscal mismanagement placing the …Read More
Regulation of European Banks and Business Models: Towards a new paradigm
CEPS, (2012), Regulation of European Banks and Business Models: Towards a new paradigm, Brussels.
Social Unrest, OECD Project on “Future Global Shocks
OECD, (2011), Social Unrest, OECD Project on ‘Future Global Shocks’, Paris.
Steering Europe out of the Crisis
Tsoukalis, Loukas, (2012), ‘Steering Europe out of the Crisis’, Policy Network Working Paper. Europe must avoid at all costs a prolonged double-dip recession, with the weakest members of the Eurozone leading a desperate suicide dance. The key challenges lie in balancing the burden of adjustment between creditors and debtors, regaining confidence in the irreversibility of Europe’s currency union and restoring the political capacity of both national and European institutions to …Read More