Well, it might appear that my smug headline in the post below may not have been so appropriate after all. At least I find the news from the FT today that Eurozone members, headed by France and Germany, are considering to set up an internal IMF type fund very significant.
(from the FT)
Germany and France are [...]

Earlier this day, I came across Moody’s Misery Index (link) which estimated the size of macroeconomic difficulties in European countries. In particular, European countries within and outside the Eurozone are likely to face stagnant GDP growth rates, high unemployment rates, deflationary pressures and a depressing fiscal outlook.
Moody’s Sovereign Misery Index
Source: FT Alphaville (link)
The most [...]

Paul Krugman has blogged an interesting analysis of the anatomy of the recent economic crisis in Europe (link).
Europe’s difficult macroeconomic situation in the aftermath of the financial and economic crisis has exacerbated rising fiscal deficits and public debt alongside strong deflationary pressures. These pressures were triggered by the highly negative output gap – the difference [...]

The Economist published a very lucid analysis (link) of the recent macroeconomic instability in the Euroarea, following the outbreak of Greek debt crisis (link) and disappointing quarterly data on GDP growth (link):
Barely had the ink dried on a statement by European leaders supporting Greece in its struggle to finance its debts when more bad news [...]

In NY Times, Paul Krugman (link) wrote about the comparison of European and U.S economic model, concluding that in the last 10 years, the European model of social democracy led to higher standard of living and, compared to U.S in output per hour and standard of living, and relative convergence of European countries relative to [...]

In yesterday’s edition of NY Times, Paul Krugman opened a puzzling discussion on the economic performance of Europe relative to the United States (link), suggesting that the European model of social democracy is an envy for economic success compared to the U.S economy.

Martin Feldstein offers some interesting thoughts on whether the Eurozone will survive the economic recovery (link).

From The Economist (link):
“Nevertheless, it is unclear how a transatlantic row can be avoided along the lines of the spat in 2001, when a planned merger between General Electric and Honeywell caused a stink. The commission worries that a union between Oracle and Sun would reduce competition in the market for corporate databases. Oracle is [...]

If the theoretical discussion in the context of monetary policy, through most of 2009, has been centered on the different tools disposable to central banks in the form of unconvetional measures it seems almost certain that 2010 will be all about putting theory into action. Most notably is of course the much debated concept of [...]

In Wednesday’s edition of WSJ, Johnny Munkhammar and Nima Sanandaji wrote a well-argued dissussion (link) on how Eastern Europe’s advantage in terms of competitive tax rates, low tax burden and sizeable reform efforts in emerging from the crisis offer a great lesson for economic recovery of the Western counterparts.