Publications

The disaster everyone feared for several months finally occurred yesterday – Greece’s credit rating was reduced to junk status and financial markets slumped. Moreover, Portugal’s debt has also been downgraded, Spanish stocks plunged more than four percentage points and in Italy it was difficult to sell government bonds.

Last week, Eurostat published the statistics on GDP growth for 2009 and it is without surprise that we read in the data a slowing down of economic growth for OECD countries. The average decrease in GDP points for EU countries is -4.2%. But this average is hiding some astonishing disparities.

Traditionally in France the rich are suspected to be responsible for every bad thing happening within the economy. The current crisis is no exception to the rule and many voices are heard saying that the rich should pay more taxes to redeem themselves from their sins that brought the crisis.

In the Boston Tea Party (Dec. 1773) local patriots dressed as Mohawk Indians and dumped the containers of tea into the harbor. The British parliament had passed the Tea Act to establish officials in major American cities to collect the new tax on tea (Americans had been buying tea from Dutch merchants outside of customs). The English East India Company had gained control of Bengal, and in taxing it caused a famine which destroyed the income of the company and depressed the stock value in which many members of parliament had invested.

Constant attacks on tax havens and hedge funds by some politicians and statesmen is at least inappropriate. As a matter of fact, it is thanks to “speculators” that we have learnt about the pitiful state of public finance in several states (for example in Greece). On the other hand, international financial markets are the unique source of liquidities for troubled States. This is the point of view of Nicolas Lecaussin, Director of Development at IREF.

This article appeared in the Wall Street Journal on March 18, 2010

In the wake of his party’s crushing defeat in regional elections, it’s time to take stock of Nicolas Sarkozy’s presidency, three years on. As in the USSR between 1985 and 1991, France has of late experienced a period of perestroika: The government recognizes the need to reform the system, but is simultaneously trying to save it. The hitch is that the system itself is unreformable. It must be replaced.

This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on February 24, 2010

In the 20th century, we often heard the maxim, “the war is the health of the state.” In the 21st, fear has become the health of the state. We are encouraged to fear all manner of things—for our finances, for our health, for the planet. But the solution—more power to the state—is always the same.

If governments continue to pile on more and more debt, when will they reach the tipping point? The Greeks appear to be close to the tipping point, and it is only a matter of time before other European countries, and eventually even the United States, begin their fiscal death spiral. The Greek government’s unwillingness to make the hard choices necessary to put its fiscal house in order in the past few weeks has caused investors to demand a 2.5 percent premium on its government-issued Eurobonds over those issued by the German government.

There is a growing call by backers of bigger government for Congress to impose a value-added tax (VAT) on top of all the other taxes Americans already pay. A VAT is similar to a national retail sales tax but is collected at every stage of business production until its entire burden ultimately falls on the consumer.

There has been a rising academic debate on the sustainability of deficit spending and accumulated debt in governments across the globe. This correlates with a growing concern that excessive government deficits and accumulated debt will lead to unstable financial environments and a devalued quality of life for future generations. Varying economies with varying fiscal behavior have increased incentives to work toward more responsible fiscal behavior through reining in deficit spending and debt accumulation. The authors of this report seek to understand the process these economies undertook, the procedures they used, and the resulting effectiveness of those procedures on achieving fiscal stability. This paper takes a broad, case-study view of 26 countries and some of the plausible factors and motivations that have led them to aim for fiscal prudence. While case studies like this cannot be definitive on causation, they are certainly suggestive. The report is looking for for policy reforms that may cause better long-run fiscal performance.