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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.
French labor unions are preparing to block President Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposal to raise the French retirement age by two years.1 They plan open-ended strikes to shut down France’s transport and energy infrastructure, hoping to repeat their success in 1995 when street protests forced President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Alain Juppe to abandon their proposals [...]
America’s labor market is in the middle of a historical crisis. Long-term and youth unemployment are at unprecedented levels, while so many men have lost their jobs that women now account for the majority of employed Americans. The stubbornly high unemployment rates have devastated the US housing market and consumer spending. Now the long-term damage [...]
In most advanced industrial countries, the value of public pension benefits is protected by annual cost-of-living adjustments, also known as COLAs. Every year, the value of pension benefits is adjusted upward, in line with inflation, wages, or a combination of the two.1 The adjustments are meant to protect the purchasing power of retirees against inflation. [...]
As the financial crisis deepens, the world’s central banks and financial authorities have gained broad support for their efforts to reintroduce liquidity to the credit markets, get banks to lend again and bring down spreads and bond yields. But these sensible and indeed required steps to avoid a repeat of the 1930s may come with [...]