Crisis

Because the music stopped.

As Thatcher said, “They [socialists] always run out of other people’s money”. Portugal is now a perfect study case for this golden rule, with its quadruple-crisis.

This would be the annual interest on the USA public debt in 2021, according to the estimations made by the economist Veronique de Rugy. This number is nearly triple from…

When reflecting on the causes of the current economic and financial crisis, the huge upsurge in private debt is one of the most cited reasons. Some people insist on blaming the private sector for this. According to them, the sustainability of its behavior has been clearly put into question by the recent events. But, what lies behind this exorbitant private indebtedness? This article is focusing on the Spanish case, with some references to the United States.

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…

This is the tax revenue expected by the USA this year, while interest payments on the publicly held debt will be about $200 billion. Contrary to the statements of the…

The current Socialist (PSOE) government in Spain has claimed in different occasions that the low fiscal pressure that Spain has experienced in 2008 and 2009, gives policy-makers a large leeway to raise taxes. Besides, this measure has been supported as necessary in order to maintain –or improve- the current government-run social safety net and the level of public infrastructures. Angel Martin explains why raising taxes in Spain is not a really good idea.

While a resolution of the debt crisis currently facing the eurozone would be most welcome, it is not clear that the current discussion goes much beyond how to bailout member countries, and whether it should be the taxpayers of these countries, the German and French taxpayer or the holders of the debts of these countries, mainly German and French banks. Even if it is decided which solution to take, the underlying problem that caused the crisis in the first place remains. This is the one-size-fits-all eurozone monetary policy.

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.

Philipp Bagus, a young Spanish scholar and one of the prize winners of the IREF Essay Contest, recently published a very interesting book on the European monetary system. Using the…