Wednesday 30 June 2010

Markets, Information, Communication and the Euro-zone Fiscal crisis

Above you can see a segment from an extremely good article by Carmassi and Micossi which can be found at VoxEU. It is about the chronology of the fiscal crisis in Greece and how miscommunication between the European Commission and Germany may have made a mess. To be honest it should be said that they do survey a very limited and rather biased sample of newspapers (Thompson-Reuters and the FT), but it is a fairly acceptable simplification from constructing a weight matrix for a larger number of newspapers that would provide a rather limited improvement of the explanation. A "must read" nonetheless!

Jean Quatremer interviews the Greek finance minister

The full article as it was published online in his blog at the website of Libération, can be found here. I've excluded the introduction. I am impressed by the apparent serenity of the Greek official. Please check ou the original website for more content. There's a particularly intriguing article about British disinformation and the Greek isles of the Aegen sea... You do however need to read French to follow the article. Alternatively run it through google translate. Here it is:

Sunday 27 June 2010

VoxEU and Policies for a Europe in a Fiscal Crisis

VoxEU, that "not-for-profit" beakon of economic thinking, has released a very good eBook on the ongoing fiscal crisis, edited by Richard Baldwin and Daniel Gros. I take the liberty of pasting the table of contents from the link above. If you have any interest in economic policy and the future of the EU, you can't miss this.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The eBook’s Table of Contents

Completing the Eurozone rescue: What more needs to be done? Edited by Richard Baldwin and Daniel Gros

Introduction: The euro in crisis – What to do? Richard Baldwin and Daniel Gros

Drawing a line under Europe’s crisis Barry Eichengreen

The Eurozone needs a political union, or at least elements of one Paul De Grauwe

The Eurozone's levitation Charles Wyplosz

Eurozone governance: What went wrong and how to repair it Jean Pisani-Ferry

The European bicycle must accelerate Angel Ubide

What more do European governments need to do to save the Eurozone in the medium run? Thomas Mayer

The narrative outside of Europe about Europe’s fiscal crisis is wrong Avinash D. Persaud

Rethinking national fiscal policies in Europe Philip R Lane

A credible Stability and Growth Pact: Raising the bar for budgetary transparency Michael C. Burda and Stefan Gerlach

Fiscal policy at a crossroads: The need for constrained discretion Antonio Fatás and Ilian Mihov

Fiscal consolidation as a policy strategy to exit the global crisis Giancarlo Corsetti

German spending is not the cure Alberto Alesina and Roberto Perotti

The long shadow of the fall of the wall Daniel Gros

Friday 25 June 2010

EU and China

I'm juggling quite a lot of stuff, so that's why I haven't posted. Plus you know the World Cup... But I'd like to paste the following article by the Economist, for your consideration: