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In RealTime posts, PIIE senior staff and colleagues discuss the fast-moving economic news, financial developments, and public policy choices confronting the United States and the world.
Today, July 31, 2012, Venezuela officially becomes a full member of the Mercosur customs union. But Venezuela’s accession—nearly a decade in the making—effectively puts to rest the pretense of Mercosur as a serious economic integration arrangement. Mercosur, the acronym for the Common Market of the Southern Cone, started promisingly enough, a political triumph of cooperation [...]
I have recently returned from a trip to Greece and offer these reflections based on many conversations with policymakers and other experts. Basic Overview. After the second elections in June, New Democracy formed a coalition with the Socialist party PASOK and Democratic Left under Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. The government’s first task is to implement [...]
As indicated by Spanish and Italian secondary market 10-year bond yields of 6 to 7 percent, the euro area remains a work in progress. Italy, on the other hand, seems capable of issuing new bonds, at least to domestic buyers, at slightly lower rates, despite its recent Moody’s downgrade. Because the European Central Bank (ECB) [...]
In my policy brief, “Combating Widespread Currency Manipulation,” I list 20 countries that meet stringent criteria for excess accumulation of foreign exchange reserves designed to hold down the values of their currencies. The list includes various statistics expressed as a percent of each country’s GDP. In response to questions, I provide here a ranking of [...]
Just when the outsourcing debate seemed to reach bottom, it fell into the basement. Pandering started with Obama’s attack ads on Bain Capital, and by extension, Romney in his career as a maestro of private equity. The Washington Post contributed to the silliness with a long article dissecting Bain’s record in creating and eliminating jobs, [...]
Olivier Ferrand, the founder of French think tank Terra Nova, died an untimely death on June 30, 2012 in the South of France, where he had just been elected deputy for the district of Marseilles North-East. He was 42. Olivier founded Terra Nova in 2008 as a nonprofit organization that publishes recommendations on topical economic, [...]
The Barclays scandal over manipulation of the LIBOR (an acronym which stands for London InterBank Offered Rate) has put this important monetary indicator in the spotlight in recent days. The LIBOR rate may not be well known to people outside the financial sector, but it affects most people’s lives directly or indirectly, underpinning hundreds of [...]
What seems like an arcane squabble over relative growth rates between Iceland and Latvia has erupted into an argument between two heavyweight voices on economic policy—the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Paul Krugman. Obscure though it may be, their disagreement is important. It is actually a proxy for a much bigger debate on whether [...]
In their summit statement [pdf] of June 29, 2012, the heads of state and government of the euro area issued a declaration widely interpreted by investors as the founding act of a European banking union, about which European policymakers have been talking increasingly vocally in the past two months or so. Their commitment remains little [...]
European leaders met on June 28–29 for the 19th time since the euro area debt crisis broke in early 2010. Once again, the leaders took decisions to do what is necessary to prevent a full-scale collapse of the euro area economy and financial system. Only time will tell whether they have put in motion what [...]