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In the New York Times of March 5th, economist Tyler Cowen gives his opinion on the situation prevailing in the United States – with a debt of $9 trillion (€ 6 435 billion). Citizens, he explains, are victims of a fiscal illusion and politicians know it. To get out of that vicious circle, Cowen suggests that we listen to the wisdom of Buchanan: “Professor Buchanan argued that the real choice was between a religion of budget balance and a rule of illusion.

The latest video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains why the process of tax competition is a critical constraint on the propensity of governments to over-tax and over-spend.…

Despite the insistence of the EU and IMF representatives, Greece is balking at privatizations plan supposed to bring some €50 billion until 2015. Though, this will help the country to…

The last statistics are placing France between the OECD countries with higher number of civil servants. Despite of the decrease of their number in the last years, they are still…

For the first time since 2002, the credit rating of Japan has been downgraded to AA-. By doing this, the Standard and Poor’s rating agency has placed Japan on the…

According to various Internet sources, Irish banks would have borrowed €51bn from the Irish central bank by the end of December, under an obscure program listed in the balance sheet as “other assets”. That is, the Central bank has electronically printed up new currency units for Irish commercial banks, without issuing debt behind these actions. The actions of the Irish central bank are not ignored by Germany, but fall out of the area of official monetary policy and appear to involve money creation outside the normal control of the European Central Bank.

Pierre Garello’s note on the Impact of the French 2006 cut in personal income tax rate on tax revenues has been quoted in a paper published by LibertadDigital.com, the Spanish on-line economic journal. Angel Martin, author of the article and IREF fellow, explains why raising taxes may

According to the 2011 Index of Economic Freedom released by the Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal, European nations continue to enjoy a great degree of economic freedom. But while three of the 10 freest economies in the world are European, only one – Switzerland, at No.5 – is rated as truly “free.”

Less than one month after the final vote of the 2011 Tax Law, members of the French government are revealing that there are projects for several important fiscal reforms in the following months.

The Commission has requested Spain, under EU state aid rules, to abolish a 2002 provision in its corporate tax that allows Spanish companies to amortise ‘financial goodwill’ deriving from acquisitions of shareholdings in companies in third countries. The Commission also asks for the recovery of any aid granted under this provision since 21 December 2007 where concrete legal obstacles to investment could not be demonstrated.