Kühnlenz, Andre, (2015), “The Myth Of The EU’s €35bn Investment Package For Greece”, Social Europe Journal, 21 July We can all recall an enthusiastic Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker. Shortly before negotiations with Greece broke off at the end of June he supposedly promised Alexis Tsipras an investment package worth €35bn. At first glance this sounded pretty generous, particularly for a country in which, since 2010, the stock of capital has …Read More

Economist, (2015), “The dark clouds of peace-Built to foster friendship, the euro is manufacturing misery instead”, 18 July UNRAVELLING the tangled logic of Greece’s bail-out talks, Charlemagne has learned, is a little like trying to explain the rules of cricket to an American. How to make sense of a process in which Greek voters loudly spurn a euro-zone bail-out offer in a referendum, only to watch Alexis Tsipras, their prime …Read More

Wyplosz, Charles, (2015), “The new European Union“, Voxeu, 14 July The new bailout deal for Greece was not easy. This column argues that it was also a failure. It will not be enough to recapitalise banks, it asks for structural reform that exceeds Greek capacities, and it raises the Greek debt-to-GDP ratio to unsustainable levels. In a few months or quarters, the programme will fail and the Grexit question will …Read More

Eichengreen, Barry, (2015), “Saving Greece, Saving Europe”, Project Syndicate, 13 July Whatever one thinks about the tactics of Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s government in negotiations with the country’s creditors, the Greek people deserve better than what they are being offered. Germany wants Greece to choose between economic collapse and leaving the eurozone. Both options would mean economic disaster; the first, if not both, would be politically disastrous as well. …Read More

Wren Lewis, Simon, (2015), “The non-independent ECB”, Mainly Macro, 10 July Imagine that the Scottish National Party (SNP) had won the independence referendum. The SNP starts negotiating with the remaining UK (rUK) government over issues like how to split up national debt. On some issue the negotiations get bogged down. Rumours start circulating that this might mean that rUK will not form a monetary union with Scotland, and that Scotland …Read More