Turner, Adair, (2015), “Why We Need More Radical Policies To Kickstart Global Growth”, Social Europe Journal, 7 October For two years, financial markets have repeated the same error – predicting that US interest rates will rise within about six months, only to see the horizon recede. This serial misjudgment is the result not of unforeseeable events, but of a failure to grasp the strength and global nature of the deflationary forces …Read More
Bloomberg View, (2015), “Europe’s Robin Hood Tax Is a Risky Proposal”, 5 October It has been called a Robin Hood tax (a term favored by acolytes of British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn) and a Tobin Tax, after the Yale economist James Tobin who popularized it. Whatever the name, a tax on financial transactions first proposed in 1936 by John Maynard Keynes may soon become a reality in 11 European countries. Relevant …Read More
Acharya, Viral, Cecchetti, Stephen, De Gregorio, José, Kalemli-Ozcan, Sebnem, R. Lane, Philip, Panizza, Ugo, (2015), “Emerging economy corporate debt: The threat to financial stability”, Voxeu, 5 October Emerging market firms have borrowed in foreign currency to take advantage of low interest rates. This column argues that when the Fed inevitably raises rates, such borrowing will be a threat to emerging economy financial systems. Yet so long as authorities use their existing prudential tools wisely, the risks appear manageable. Relevant Posts Boughton, …Read More
Ruparel, Raoul, (2015), “Commission eyes pragmatic steps towards Capital Markets Union”, Open Europe, 30 September The European Commission has today released its detailed “Action Plan” for the creation of a Capital Markets Union (CMU). Open Europe’s Raoul Ruparel assess what is and what is not included in the plans. Relevant Posts Wolff, Guntram and Veron Nicolas, (2015) “Capital Markets Union: a vision for the long term”, 24 April Louri-Dendrinou, Ε. (2014) …Read More
Palacio, Ana, (2015), “The BRICS Fallacy”, Project Syndicate, 29 September The recent downgrade of Brazil’s credit rating to junk status was followed by a raft of articles heralding the crumbling of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). How predictable: schadenfreude almost always follows bad news about the BRICS, whose members were once hailed as the world’s up-and-coming economic powerhouses and next major political force. Relevant Posts Παπανικολάου, …Read More
Janssen, Ronald, (2015), “How Germany Gains From The Euro While Others Pay”, Social Europe Journal, 27 September One of its main ideas is that the euro area lacks a procedure that could declare member states bankrupt when having lost access to financial markets. This makes the restructuring of unsustainably high debt burdens even more complicated than it is. Schäuble’s non-paper even uses the Greek crisis to argue that this situation …Read More
Hausmann, Ricardo, (2015), “Don’t Fear the IMF”, Project Syndicate, 28 September The International Monetary Fund is, in many places, the organization that everybody loves to hate. According to some, the IMF is bad for the poor, women, economic stability, and the environment. Joseph Stiglitz, whose influence is amplified by his Nobel Prize, blames the IMF for causing and then worsening the economic crises it was called on to resolve. The …Read More
Burda, Michael, (2015), “Dispelling three myths on economics in Germany”, Voxeu publications, 23 September Many analysts believe that German economists hold a very different view of macroeconomics. This column presents a personal view why this belief is wrong. The fact that Europe still consists of sovereign nations and that most Europeans still want to keep it that way informs much of what happens inside German economists’ heads. Relevant Posts Heise, Michael, …Read More
Kaletsky, Anatole, (2015), “Why the Fed Buried Monetarism”, Project Syndicate, 22 September The US Federal Reserve’s decision to delay an increase in interest rates should have come as no surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s comments. The Fed’s decision merely confirmed that it is not indifferent to international financial stress, and that its risk-management approach remains strongly biased in favor of “lower for …Read More
Dietsch, Peter, (2015), “Common rules (not rates) should be the answer to tax competition in the EU”, LSE blog, 23 September The creativity of rich individuals and their tax advisors to hide private wealth in tax havens such as Switzerland or the Isle of Man knows hardly any bounds. Just as unethical, though often legal, are the multiple techniques multinational corporations use to shift profits to low-tax jurisdictions such as Luxembourg. …Read More
