Tag: Eurozone

Mario Monti defends the austerity fortress

I have known Mario Monti since the time he was my professor of Monetary Economics in the late 70s. An excellent teacher, he opened his course by teaching financial accounting and balance sheets, explaining that every financial asset has a corresponding liability and demonstrating the importance of net sectors’ financial positions.

Today, Mario Monti chairs the EU “high-level group on own resources”, working on a reform of the EU budget. In an interview by Federico Fubini (Corriere della Sera, 18 October 2015), he discusses the current state of public finances in the EU and shares his concerns that the tight fiscal policy enforced in highly indebted EU countries is now being relaxed prematurely.

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Eurozone desperately needs a “FISCAL WHATEVER-IT-TAKES”. But EU leaders ain’t bold enough to act.

Even under the rosiest scenario that a deal is reached on Greece’s new three-year bail-out program, the economic conditions of Greece, and of the Eurozone as a whole, will remain serious. Europe seems unable to find the political path to move out of such deadly gridlock. Yet, the logic is simple.

Eurozone like Monopoly

Consider the Eurozone like the game of Monopoly. Read more

Deflation: Symptom or disease?

Today, Italian media published the news that prices in January were 0.6% lower than a year ago, calling such deflation a disease, a contagion. The fact that a component of deflation is the falling price of oil should be good news for an oil-importing country such as Italy. But no! National TV (RAI) insists that deflation is a nightmare, and other media wish for inflation to come back thanks to Draghi’s QE.

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Is QE forever?

The point of Draghi’s QE is not the amount. It is the principle.

It is not the much discussed size of the ECB operation. Rather, it is the fact that the ECB has become a buyer of government bonds issued in the countries that are members of the Eurozone.

This is the really big news in the Eurozone where, until last week, the ECB’s monetary operations did not include the possibility of trading in the government securities market in the same way the Fed, the Bank of England, or the Bank of Japan do.

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