Why the Neoclassical Story About German Wage “Moderation” Causing the Eurozone Crisis is Wrong
Focusing on German wage “moderation,” as in restriction, leads to a neat, plausible, and wrong tale of what caused the Eurozone crisis.
Read more...Category Archives: Europe
Grexit Risk May Be Back Sooner Than You Think
Why Grexit is likely to be back on the table by summer.
Read more...Fiscal Cost of Refugees in Europe
Data in Sweden shows that even with generous support for refugees, the costs are not high.
Read more...Wobbly Italian Banks May Get “Bad Bank” Resolution Vehicle
Italian banks’ extend and pretend game may be coming to an end.
Read more...The Implications of Foreign Minister Lavrov’s Snub of Victoria Nuland
The reign of neocons, as symbolized by State Department Victoria Nuland’s “Fuck the EU” remark, may be past its sell-by date.
Read more...Former BIS Chief Economist Warns of Massive Debt Defaults, Need for Debt Jubilee; Fingers Europe as First in Line
Even though the former chief economist of the BIS calls for a debt jubilee, it’s only part of the medicine needed to get the economy out of the ditch.
Read more...How Europe Will Fail to Address the Migration Crisis in Early 2016
Explaining the reasons for Europe’s gridlock on its migration crisis.
Read more...Lost in Assumptions: Assessing the Economic Impact of Migrants
Yves here. This post is more important than it seems for several reasons. First, it reveals one of the dirty secrets of modeling: if you tweak assumptions within plausible ranges, you can come up with wildly different outcomes. Second, it identifies what some of these assumptions are in the now-hot-topic of whether letting more migrants […]
Read more...John Helmer: The Clinton-Blair Dossier on Yeltsin and Putin
Newly-released material from Clinton archives show him and Blair working to control Yeltsin, with some success, and their plans for Putin.
Read more...Don Quijones: “Everything Has Come to a Standstill”- Political Fallout Hits Business in Spain
By Don Quijones, Spain & Mexico, editor at Wolf Street. Originally published as Wolf Street. On Friday, Spain’s benchmark stock index, the Ibex 35, plumbed depths it had not seen since the worst days of 2013, the year that the country’s economy began its “miraculous” recovery. Of the 35 companies listed on the index, 15 […]
Read more...Eurozone Delays and Half Measures
Are the eurozone’s continuing woes the result of its incomplete construction or because of policy errors in responding to the crisis?
Read more...Mathew D. Rose: Now It Is Poland’s Turn
Germany is very upset that Poland has voted in a populist, Euroskeptic, anti-austerity government. And Germany is particularly unhappy that the new regime is increasing its control over public media….which Germany already has in place.
Read more...How the Labor Cost Competitiveness Myth is Making the Eurozone Crisis Worse
A new article makes a devastating attack on a fundamental belief driving Eurozone policy, that the member economies need to be made more “competitive,” meaning labor needs to be squeezed, for the currency union to achieve more growth.
Read more...Louis Proyect: Greece as Rashomon
Like Akira Kurosawa’s “Rashomon”, the story of Syriza is also one about a rape told from different, self-serving and contradictory perspectives.
Read more...The Predictability of Political Extremism
What’s at stake: The rise of the extreme right in the latest French election has mostly been treated as surprising or reflecting special circumstances like the November 13 Paris attacks. But a large literature linking extreme right votes to persisting depressed economic conditions suggests that longer run factors are at play.
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