politics, economy and employment & labour
Whenever I write about Greece, a large proportion of comments (maybe not a majority) could be summarised as follows: how can you side with Greece when its economy is so inefficient and its governments so inept and after everything we have done for them. I have no illusions about the inefficiencies and corruption endemic within […]
At first sight the negotiations between Greece and the Troika seem to be simply a battle about resources: how much of the pie that is Greek national income their creditors should receive. There have been many similar types of battle over the years – what makes this one unusual is that the creditors have a […]
A few people have asked me to respond to this FT piece from Niall Ferguson. I was reluctant to, because it is really just a bit of triumphalist Tory tosh. That such things get published in the Financial Times is unfortunate but I’m afraid not surprising in this case. However I want to write later about something else […]
Whenever I write a post critical of German views on Eurozone policy, I get comments which can be paraphrased in the following way. Greece (and maybe other Eurozone countries) are incapable of governing themselves properly, and when they get into difficulties Germany has to bail them out, so it is only reasonable that as a […]
The impact of fiscal austerity on the Eurozone as a whole has been immense. In my recent Vox piece, I did a back of the envelope calculation which said that GDP in 2013 might be around 4% lower as a result of cuts in government consumption and investment alone. This seemed to accord with some model […]
Those who think current levels of inequality are not a problem can skip this one. The Blair governments did a lot to fight poverty, but were famously relaxed about inequality, or more specifically the earnings of the 1%. For many in those governments this reflected their own views, but it also reflected a political calculation. […]
Imagine that it was revealed that 10% of the European Union budget (the money that goes to the EU centre to fund the common agricultural policy and other EU wide projects) had been found to be completely wasted as a result of actions by EU policymakers. By wasted I do not mean spent on things […]
The latest Bank of England forecast has inflation returning to the 2% target by the end of 2017, which is in three years time. That is an unusually long time to be away from target. So what is the MPC proposing to do about this long lapse from target? Absolutely nothing. Tony Yates goes through all the detail, but remains mildly […]
As the Eurozone experiences a prolonged demand-deficient recession, and given Germany’s pivotal role in making that happen, it is important to get the argument against current German policy right. It seems to me there are two wrong directions to take here. The first is to argue that Germany needs to undertake fiscal expansion because it […]
Everyone knows that the Eurozone suffered a crisis from 2010 to 2012, as periphery countries could no longer sell their debt. A superficial analysis puts this down to profligate governments, but look more closely and it becomes clear that the formation of the Euro itself led to an excessive monetary stimulus in these periphery countries. […]
When, almost a year ago, Paul Krugman wrote six posts within three days laying into the stance of Germany on the Eurozone’s macroeconomic problems, even I thought that maybe this was a bit too strong, although there was nothing in what he wrote that I disagreed with. Yet as Germany’s stance proved unyielding in the face of […]
One of the political/economic soap operas over the last year has been the UK Labour Party’s agonising over the perception of its economic competence. The story always starts with current polling data: either Miliband’s personal ratings or Labour’s rating for economic competence. It then often seeks to find the answer to these problems in the […]
