100 posts
Of perception gaps and financing traps
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The current public debate on fiscal policy is often portrayed as a political battle between the Austerians and Spendanigans. As a doctrinaire agnostic, I refuse to take an oath to either of these, as there is no silver bullet or single issue mov...
Portugal's Constitutional Court Blocks Bailout Measures
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Portugal's Constitutional Court has struck down austerity measures considered necessary by the government to meet the conditions of its 78-billion-euro (101 billion US dollars) bailout program, opening a billion-euro gap in the country's 2013 budget.
Live Blog: ECB Meeting
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Hello everyone, and welcome to our live blog of the European Central Bank’s first monetary policy decision of 2013 with Brian Blackstone in Frankfurt and David Cottle in London.
Même pas peur !
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La fin du monde s’est bien ri de nous aujourd’hui, en nous mettant au défi de continuer encore un peu, mieux si possible, combien de temps, on verra. Ce délai bien salutaire nous donne à vivre une nouvelle année européenne, qui sera, on peut...
Market pillar of EU industrial policy: harmonisation and surveillance
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Innovation, skills, markets and access to capital are the four pillars of the updated Europe 2020 (EU2020) flagship initiative for industrial policy. Thus, the internal market (single market) and international markets play an important part in EU in...
Innovation pillar of EU industrial policy
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After the implementation of the 2010 EU industrial strategy and the competitiveness of industry in the European Union, we turn to four pillars for EU industrial policy in the Commission Staff Working document SWD(2012) 297 accompanying the communicat...
"European Commission autumn forecast: overoptimistic and in denial" by Andrew Watt
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If you are thinking of embarking on reading the European Commission’s Autumn economic forecast (191 pages), released today, you may want to read the first sentence and then think hard whether you shouldn’t save yourself the trouble – especially...
"The Second Coming of Barack Obama" by Kemal Dervis
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The race was tough, but US President Barack Obama has won re-election. The question now, for the United States and the world, is what will he do with a fresh four-year term? To win re-election with a still-weak economy and unemployment close to 8% wa...
"Higher Economic Growth in Europe: Barking up the Right Tree" by Rolf Langhammer
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A “ghost debate” spreads through Europe: a debate on higher economic growth in order to virtually grow out of public debt and to put an end to the crisis of individual Euro countries. The debate can be labeled “ghost-like” because: it is erro...
EU Cuts Growth Forecasts for Eastern Members
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The European Commission cut its growth forecasts for 2013 for eastern European Union members--which use their national currencies and have been growing faster than the euro zone--as the dire economic situation of the more vulnerable EU members spills...
Czech Three-Year Yield at Record Low, Government Wins Vote
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Czech borrowing costs fell to record lows at a three-year bond auction showing strong demand Wednesday, shortly before the country's embattled right-leaning coalition won a parliamentary confidence vote.
Benoît Mandelbrot – poet in a foreign language (2): Five rules
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The central theme of Benoît Mandelbrot’s work was to find a regular pattern in irregularity and roughness as he described in the videos listed here and in his various books and articles. His mathematics, the fractal geometry, found applications in...
European and global ICT standards and interoperability
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After the blog posts about a strategic vision for European standards and their importance ”everywhere”, plus one entry in Finnish about standards in the single market for services and one article in Swedish about creating new standards faster, we...
U.S. Deficits: Reflect Virtue or Vice?
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Chronic government fiscal deficits, and thus debt, may suggest that a people is not up to self-governance. Moreover, the imbalance may be a drawback of democracy itself. That is to say, a people may not have sufficient will to constrain its own consu...
Russia needs a plan for modernising its economy
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Russia’s economy is not performing badly. Thanks to the high oil price, economic growth is likely to stay at 4 per cent or a little less for the next few years – respectable by West European standards. The problem is that Russia’s rulers do not...
A rude awakening
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IN LESS than 24 hours, the French have been shaken out of their complacency over the state of their economy no fewer than three times. On November 5th, Louis Gallois, a left-leaning industrialist, unveiled a government-commissioned report on French c...
Morning Briefing: Czech Retail Contraction Widens
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It is business as usual Monday with all markets in the region open after holidays. But the week started with bleak retail data from the Czech economy paired with news that commercial lending in Hungary remains in the doldrums.
Compétitivité : les trois débats
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Authors: Jean Pisani-FerryUn seul suffirait au malheur du gouvernement. Mais sur la compétitivité, trois débats s’enchevêtrent : ils portent sur l’urgence d’une réponse ; sur la nature du mal ; et sur les solutions. Le prem...
Some economic links
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What is “reform”? Peter Dorman blogs. Wynne Godley on the Euro. He was agin it, for sensible reasons, even if the dream-remark “Unless he justifies himself I must save him” in his memoir of psychoanalysis seems oddly appropria...
A Thought or two on Socialistic Crypto-Command Economics
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A French commenter on Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s article noting how regrettable Hollande’s handling of the French economy describes the mistakes Socialists make over and over to a tee. Canute thought he commanded the waves; French socialists think...
"Gustav Horn and Michael Burda on Economic Policy in Europe" by SEJ
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Watch Professor Gustav Horn (IMK) and Professor Michael Burda (Humboldt University Berlin) discuss the state of economic policies in Europe. The discussion was moderated by Professor Sebastian Dullien (HTW Berlin). This panel was recorded at the ...
Blogs review: The economics and politics of migration in the economic crisis
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Authors: David C. Saha, Christoph SkupnikWhat’s at stake: Rising unemployment in rich Western states fundamentally changes the context of migration. High unemployment among immigrants reduces the pull exerted by richer countries on potential immigr...
MORNING BRIEFING: Czechs, Western European Markets in Focus
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Central Europe will follow moves in core markets in Western Europe while Czech koruna and equities investors are likely to continue digesting the latest interest rate cut by the Czech National Bank.
Budapest Challenges West
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By Gabor Stier Having announced the policy of openness towards East, Hungary leads “free war” with the...
Debt Crises and the Future of the World Economy: Public Lecture at Seattle’s Town Hall, 20th November 2012
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When: Tuesday, November 20, 2012, 7:30 – 9:00pm Where: Downstairs at Town Hall; enter on Seneca Street. $5 Click here for Seattle Town Hall’s webpage Financialization, ineffectual bank regulation, greed, and globalization were not the root...
Putinomics
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IT HAS been a difficult year for Vladimir Putin. His decision to return to his old job as Russia’s president triggered widespread street protests in Moscow and other cities. It also led to a steep fall in his popularity, previously his most potent...
Seeing Our Way Through The Crisis: Why We Need Fiscal Transparency
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Without good fiscal information, governments can’t understand the fiscal risks they face or make good budget decisions. Fiscal transparency—the public availability of timely, reliable, and relevant data on the past, present, and future state of...
"What is Pre-distribution?" by Kitty Ussher
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Pre-distribution may be a new word but it is a route into exploring some far older ideas that lie at the heart of progressive debate. Jacob Hacker, the US academic credited with inventing the concept of pre-distribution, says it is “to focus on ma...
The EU and Europe that I want.
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It is noticeable that this blog is so called "pro-EU" or "pro-European." Does this mean that I personally support everything that comes from the current effort for European integration? Definitely not. I do not believe that the current...
Ever wonder how wonderful life would be without capitalism?
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Ever wonder what life would be like without capitalism? (Thanks to Carine)Join The Fund for American Studies on a journey to an alternate universe -- one where capitalism no longer exists. You may find it's not quite what you expected. For more in...
CoR: Delivering Europe 2020 requires more involvement of local and regional authorities and more financial investment
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The 3rd Committee of the Regions (CoR) Monitoring Report on Europe 2020 shows that widespread awareness and support for Europe 2020 are not enough to meet the ambitious targets of Europe's growth strategy. There is an urgent need to commit more...
Is the “economic growth” hegemony crumbling?
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“Our problem is not lack of growth but too much of it,” Sedláček said. An economy that uses debt to grow must continue to do so by taking on more and more debt or, alternatively, face a slowdown that will lead to bankruptcy. It is like owning a...
Intellectual Property Rights and Antitrust – is there light at the end of the tunnel? Part 2
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Authors: Mario MarinielloPart 2/2 In my previous blog I wrote about the work of the European Union and United States competition authorities’ chief economists on a set of common principles that could improve standard-setting processes and li...
Money, jobs, growth, pacts - how EU tries to boost employment
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As of 18 October, the EU has engaged in talking ‘shop’. Between fighting large-scale unemployment and being in favour of positions created just to reach this goal or promoting the creation of ‘quality’ jobs, there's just one question: who’s...
Argentina’s Legal Wrangles Shed Light on Greek Holdout Policy
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Greece's decision back in March to pay all the creditors who declined to participate in the country's debt restructuring looked jarring to some. But take a look at Argentina. Over a decade after its debt default, it is still mired in legal cases from...
The UK‘s choice – Perseverance or Printing
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The UK economy grew by 1.0% in the third quarter, the fastest quarterly growth rate for five years. After several quarters of negative data and a slump into double-dip recession, this would appear, at first sight, to be very good news. Though the...
Morning Briefing: Regional Politics Take Center Stage
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Regional politics will be in focus Monday with the Hungarian parliament likely to approve new electoral rules while a joint Czech-Slovak cabinet meeting is also scheduled.
"The Contribution of Public Services to Social Progress" by Wouter Van Dooren
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Watch Wouter Van Dooren of the University of Antwerp discuss how to measure the contribution of public services and what impact they have on social progress. This talk was recorded at the conference ‘From (un)economic growth to future well-bei...
Poland's Return to Capitalism
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My book 'Poland's Return to Capitalism' has recently come out in a paperback version. ...
"Why Investment must be Socialised" by George Irvin
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Today’s social-democrats are frightened by the notion of state-led investment. Keynes famously argued in the General Theory ([1936] 1974 p. 376) that maintaining long-term growth meant that the investment function must be largely – in his wor...
The EU: a threat to democracy?
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In the 1980s, the prospect of EU access for Greece, Spain and Portugal helped to pave the way to democracy. Today, EU economic policies contribute to the dismantling of these democracies. All the three countries mentioned above are experimenting a lo...
Implementing EU Compact for Growth and Jobs
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Even if the European (part) executive has already published the Commission Work Programme (CWP) 2013, two volumes of COM(2012) 629, there is quite a backlog of ongoing legislative and policy intiatives to clear. The approaching October 2012 Europea...
The Price of American Inequality is a Heavy Burden on the US Economy Says Nobel Prize Winning Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz
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For years, we have been posting at LawPundit about the inequality of wealth and income in America, and we see that Joseph E. Stiglitz has a New York Times article titled Some Are More Unequal Than Others, relating to his recent book, The Price of Ine...
Morning Briefing: Czech Central Bankers Speeches Take Center Stage
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Czech views on events in Europe come into view Friday when policy makers speak in Prague.
EU-kommissionens arbetsprogram för 2013
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Enligt konsultföretaget Fleishman-Hillard var det inte mycket av EU:s ödesfrågor som överlevde från ordföranden José Manuel Barrosos tal om tillståndet i unionen (SPEECH/12/596) till kommissionens arbetsprogram för 2013 (IP/12/1131). Sju...
"Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz on the Economy and Inequality" by SEJ
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Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz discussed their respective books on the current economic problems and inequality at an event organised by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET). For the everybody who was unable to attend the event they fortu...
Economic Crisis Shakes Old Paradigms
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“As our global economic and ecological crises converge, neither neoliberalism nor Keynesianism can cure what ails us.” (Source: Foreign Policy in Focus) Excellent analysis of the flawed remedies for the twin economy-ecology crises by Walden Bello...
Latin America and the Caribbean: Dealing with Another Food Price Shock
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World food prices are on the rise again owing mainly to global weather-related shocks. This has led to concern that the rise could result in higher inflation and hurt the most vulnerable. The impact on domestic inflation in Latin America and the Cari...
"The State of Macroeconomics: Reformers vs. Revolutionaries" by Iyanatul Islam
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In August 2008, when the global recession was casting its malevolent influence on the international economy, Olivier Blanchard, an eminent macroeconomist, issued the following proclamation: ‘the state of macro is good’.[1] He wanted to demonstrat...
"The Crisis of the GDP-led Growth Model" by Philippe van Parijs
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Watch Philippe Van Parijs (University of Louvain) discuss the above topic. This talk was recorded at the conference ‘From (un)economic growth to future well-being’ organised by the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) and the European P...
Enthralled and Excited? The Commission Work Programme 2013
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Every year, the European Commission releases a work programme which outlines the legislative, as well as non-legislative, proposals that will initiated in the following year. This year’s Commission’s Work Programme (CWP) for 2013, published o...
EU:n komission työohjelma vuodelle 2013
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Tavallisille kansalaisille Euroopan unioni on jäänyt varsin etäiseksi ja tuntemattomaksi, joskin mielenilmaukset voivat olla vahvoja kun EU nousee kahvipöytäkeskustelun aiheeksi. Sitävastoin suuryritykset, etujärjestöt, alueet (osavaltiot)...
Monday 29th October, in the House of Parliament, London, debating “European and Global Recovery – What Will It Take?”
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Next Monday, the European-Atlantic Group is organising a debate in the Grand Committee of the House of Commons, on what it will take for Europe and the world to return to growth and end the Crisis which began in 2008. In the Chair: The Rt Hon The...
Bank of England’s Haldane on the crisis of economics: “Our models are no longer working properly”
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Andrew Haldane is the Bank of England’s Executive Director for Financial Stability. I recently talked to him about the crisis of contemporary economics and the way forward. You are vocal critic of mainstream macro economics. How does this squar...
Hooray! Global Economy Is Getting Worse More Slowly
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Don’t count your chickens just yet but the global economy may have reached the point where it’s at least getting worse more slowly and at best starting to recover. This could yet prove a wildly optimistic statement if the U.S. economy falls off t...
"Mitt Romney’s Question-Mark Economy" by Robert Reich
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As we close in on Election Day, the questions about what Mitt Romney would do if elected grow even larger. Rarely before in American history has a candidate for president campaigned on such a blank slate. Yet, paradoxically, not a day goes by that we...
EU Commission Work Programme 2013
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Tuesday 23 October 2012 the EU (part) executive adopted the Commission Work Programme (CWP) for 2013 (short press release IP/12/1131; available in 22 languages). The European Commission promises new policy initiatives in seven very broad ”key po...
Genomförandet av EU:s tillväxt- och sysselsättningspakt
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Europeiska rådet den 28 till 29 juni 2012 (EUCO 76/1/12 rev 1 sv) antog en tillväxt- och sysselsättningspakt (se stycke 1 och bilagan från sidan 7). I slutsatserna den 18-19 oktober 2012 (EUCO 156/12) gör Europeiska rådet en bedömning av lä...
"Climate Change and the GDP-led Growth Model" by Andrew Simms
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Watch Andrew Simms, Fellow at the New Economics Foundation (NEF) in London, discuss climate change and the flaws of the GDP-based growth model. This talk was recorded at the conference ‘From (un)economic growth to future well-being’ organ...
EU:n kasvu- ja työllisyyssopimuksen täytäntöönpano
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Kesäkuun 2012 Eurooppa-neuvosto hyväksyi kasvu- ja työllisyyssopimuksen (EUCO 76/12 päätelmien kohta 1 sekä liite sivulta 7). Lokakuun Eurooppa-neuvosto (EUCO 156/12) kehotti (itseään?) ohjelman ripeään ja päättäväiseen toimeenpanoon:...
Bonds Trade Lower Introducing The Age Of Deflation …. Neoliberal Credit Finally Fails To Inflate Stocks Globally As The Nasdaq 100, Small Cap Value, Large Cap Growth, Semiconductors, And Biotech Lead World Stocks Lower
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Financial Market report for the week ending October 19, 2012 1) … During the third week of October, 2012, the age of deflation commenced on the failure of neoliberal finance. Global fiat wealth is now turning lower as not only have world stocks, VT...
"Heterogeneity at the IMF" by Simon Wren-Lewis
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Right now, the IMF appears to some to be on the side of the angels. Their self criticism about the impact of austerity is both unusual and commendable in equal measure. They also appear to recognise that pushing Greece further than it can or shou...
Are We Really All Keynesians Now?
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Compare the following two statements made by PM Donald Tusk to the Polish parliament over the past year:November, 2011: 'I do not hide the fact that the aim is to stabilise the financial situation of Poland. This is positive for the reputation of Pol...
The 2012 European Semester
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Member States’ economic policies are coordinated at EU level through the annual “European Semester”. After Council approval of 2012-2013 country-specific recommendations, Member States have now to integrate them in their national bu...
Barroso on the Compact for Growth and Jobs
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As some other pre-democratic political entitities, the European Union has its own provisional government, called the European Council, with the Euro Summit as its shadow (not transparently explained or highlighted on the Eurozone portal). Herman Van...
”Just a few more issues to fix”: EU Compact for Growth and Jobs
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After decrypting a tiny paragraph with main sources and looking up to the summit of Mount Olympus or reflecting on the European Council looking down on EU citizens, we continue by looking at the conclusions EUCO 156/12 (all language versions here) re...
Industrial competitiveness: centre-right politicians called to action
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Here is my ‘net take’ from the European Ideas Network (EIN) conference, where I was on a panel discussing industrial competitiveness. This fits well with current concerns about growth and job losses, as policy-makers try to think beyond t...
Blogs review: Markets without a price
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Authors: Jérémie Cohen-SettonWhat’s at stake: Lloyd Shapley and Alvin Roth have won the Nobel Prize in economics “for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design”, which relate to the study of social allocat...
The Global Crisis Reaches Asia
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Europeans are so concerned with the crises in peripheral economies that it will come as a surprise that we may be at the beginning of a developing crisis in China.
