Monthly Archives: November 2010

Euro-zone Update (3): Greece loan extension, the creation of the European Systemic Risk Board

Since May commentators have been seriously concerned about the solvency of Greece in 2013/14 once the Euro-zone loan runs out. This led to the inevitable question as to what the use of that facility is, if all it does is … Continue reading

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Euro-zone Update (2): European Stability Mechanism and Collective Action Clauses

Bloomberg announces today that the EU has reached an agreement on that thorny issue. Here is the announcement by the Eco-Fin Council of the EU, corroborating that report. The Economic and Financial affairs Council statement reads as such: “Rules will … Continue reading

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Evaluating the Criticisms against the EU

This entry was originally posted in 2010, before the financial crisis. While the argument still holds for EU member states that are not members of the Euro-Zone, for EZ member states, the discussion ought to be more nuanced because the … Continue reading

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Euro-zone Update(1): EFSF Reform, Size and the Causes of Recent Turbulence

In the spirit of this post, and as the first entry to this blog’s “Eurozone Update”, I call the reader’s attention to this post by Jean Quatremer, where he describes the French and the German positions on the details of … Continue reading

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Euro-zone Updates

It should be said that I am very interested in the functioning and in the recent developments of the Euro-zone, and most recently with EFSF which I have followed from the moment of its inception (here, here, here, in a … Continue reading

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British Eurosceptics want the UK to leave the EU

On my way home last night I came across this headline while reading the Evening Standard: “Tory Right frustrated at David Cameron’s ‘soft line’ on EU“. “Oddly” enough, today the Daily Express decided to take an editorial position crusading for … Continue reading

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European Integration (3): Crowding out comprehensive European integration

Looking back at the first few posts on this blog, it seems that before highlighting any news I have ended up spending some time describing the process of European integration and its consequences.  I think this happened because of the … Continue reading

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European Integration (2): The sovereign debt crisis: worst than its exchange rate predecessors

In the preceding posts I started by describing the mechanism of integration and then moved on to describe the process of adaptation that our political economies go through once faced with an undeniable shock. In this post I lean over … Continue reading

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European integration(1): The six stages of reform

I have previously discussed the evolutionary character of International integration. On that occasion I mentioned adaptation, but failed to describe it. Here I attempt to address that shortcoming by describing the 6 stages of adaptation to economic or political economy … Continue reading

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Achieving a permanent and coherent EFSF through Enhanced Cooperation

In this post I argue that membership of the Euro-zone requires an adjustment substitute to currency depreciation. I propose fiscal policy as the desired channel for this adjustment and a more comprehensive version of the EFSF as the form of … Continue reading

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