The Greek government continues to climb down substantively on its promises of resistance to the dictates of its creditors as time pressure intensifies.
Read more...Budget season brings out the deficit/debt burden propagandists, and Maya MacGuineas of Fix the Debt is a prominent fixture. Sadly, her type needs to be debunked often.
Read more...Things are not looking good for Greece.
Read more...If you followed Yanis Varoufakis before he became a household word (at least in Europe and in finance circles), you’ll recognize that he is making a layperson-friendly case for the Eurozone reforms that he, Stuart Holland, and Jamie Galbraith call A Modest Proposal. A new wrinkle is that he argues that the scarcity of bonds eligible for QE argues for one of its ideas, infrastructure spending funded by the EIB (those bonds would presumably be eligible for QE purchases).
Read more...Bernie Sanders gave a forceful, if sobering, assessment of the state of the economy from the perspective of working men and women, as well as retirees, and focused on the hypocrisy of corporations and the wealthy that poor-mouth as a way to extract even more subsidies and tax breaks.
Read more...Yves here. Unlike many other comments on the state of Greece’s finances, this post takes a stab at Greece’s ongoing budget needs as well as its various debt due dates. Note that one uncertainty flagged here has been resolved in Greece’s favor. The Greek government will receive €550 million this month from the Hellenic Financial Stability Facility.
Read more...As Greece staggers under the weight of a depression exceeding that of the 1930s in the US, it appears difficult to see a way forward from what is becoming increasingly a Ponzi financed, extend and pretend, “bailout” scheme. In fact, there are much more creative and effective ways to solve some of the macrofinancial dilemmas that Greece is facing, and without Greece having to exit the euro. But these solutions challenge many existing economic paradigms, including the concept of “money” itself.
Read more...Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has a new article on Greece’s scramble to find the funds to meet it March IMF payments, which are €1.5b in total, with €300 due on Friday. Note that IMF payment dates aren’t as hard and fast as credit card due dates; the agency allows borrowers some leeway if they have a clear intent to pay.
Nevertheless, Evans-Pritchard’s most important observation may be the one at the close of his article:
Whatever piece of paper they signed in Brussels 10 days ago, the two sides are still talking past each other.
In other words, the two sides disagree profoundly as to what the memo means. And that may mean that in reality, there is no deal at all.
Read more...Let us begin with what should be indisputable: the Eurogroup agreement that the Greek government was dragged into on Friday amounts to a headlong retreat.
Read more...Rose focuses on an issue that reader Swedish Lex and other have pointed out: the heavy-handed actions of Germany in the tempestuous negotiations between the Eurozone and Greece have wound up being a major own goal.
But the bigger issue that Rose raises is that last week’s ugly negotiations, in combination with the fiasco in Ukraine, is exposing Germany as a lousy hegemon, which he argues is producing a political crisis in Germany and fracture lines in Europe.
Read more...his is an excellent background piece on how Greece got where it is and how its various bailouts were structured. It also helps explain the past and current roles the various members of the Troika play and discusses the prospects for Greece achieving its aims.
Read more...TAN, or tax anticipation notes, would way be a for Greece to give itself more fiscal spending wriggle room without violating Eurozone rules. That will likely be necessary if Monday’s meeting in Brussels results in no extension of the current Eurozone bailout.
Read more...Just as sumer is icumen in, so to are budget fights. And that means another opportunity to talk up the platinum coin as a way around budgetary tactics designed to inflict austerity on ordinary Americans.
Read more...Will we all end up living in shipping containers, and won’t that involve substantial demand destruction?
Read more...Much research about the Great Recession in the US has focused on the boom-bust in housing wealth and spending of the middle class. This column argues that a large role was actually played by the rich. The savings rate of the rich went through a similar cycle as that of the middle class with rising wealth first stimulating their consumption and falling wealth restraining it. Most importantly, the wealth of the rich has become so large and volatile that wealth effects on their consumption could impact the whole economy.
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