Buti, Marco, Deroose, Servaas, Leandro, José, Giudice, Gabriele, (2017),  “Completing EMU”, VoxEU, 13 July Despite much being done to strengthen the Economic and Monetary Union, it remains incomplete and this is one of the main reasons for the Eurozone’s lacklustre economic performance in the recent years. While there are still diverging views on how to “cross the river”, there is also a political and economic window of opportunity to complete the …Read More

Roubini, Nouriel, (2017), “The New Abnormal in Monetary Policy”, Project Syndicate, 10 July Financial markets are starting to get rattled by the winding down of unconventional monetary policies in many advanced economies. Soon enough, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) and the Swiss National Bank (SNB) will be the only central banks still maintaining unconventional monetary policies for the long term. The US Federal Reserve started phasing out its asset-purchase program (quantitative easing, …Read More

Krauss, Melvyn, (2017), “Italy’s Bank Bailout Serves German Interests Too”, Bloomberg View, 7 July As Europe’s politicians digest the lessons from Italy’s recent 17 billion euro ($19.34 billion) bailout of two Venetian banks, two schools of opinion have emerged. The majority view is that the bailout, while less than ideal, at least brought greater financial stability to Italy. Relevant Posts Setser, Brad W., Smith, Emma, (2017), «Where Does Italy’s Bank …Read More

Gros, Daniel, (2017), “The Inflation Target Trap”, Project Syndicate, 6 July Central banks have a problem: growth in much of the world is accelerating, but inflation has failed to take off. Of course, for most people, growth without inflation is the ideal combination. But central banks have set the goal of achieving an inflation rate of “below, but close to 2%,” as the European Central Bank puts it. And, at …Read More

Schmidt, Christoph M., (2017), “The Art of the Surplus”, Project Syndicate, 5 June Germany’s persistently high current-account surplus may not be on the official agenda of this week’s G20 summit in Hamburg, but it is bound to provoke tensions among the assembled leaders. After all, that surplus, which has long been a bone of contention for many of Germany’s trade partners, hit a new high of 8.3% of nominal GDP …Read More