Italy is in recession. There is nothing extraordinary about this, as Donald Rumsfeld notoriously said ’stuff happens’, and economies do have their ups and downs. But this recession is a little different, since it is structural and not cyclical. For the Italian economy to return to a better trajectory something has to be done, but [...]

The Italian Northern League have, as promised, launched their ‘bring back the Lira’ referendum campaign. Whilst at this stage there is something vaguely comic in all this, remember it is a wild card which will be floating around if Italy’s economic crisis worsens.
The Italian Northern League party launched a campaign to revive the lira at [...]

The Greeks had a word for it ‘:aporia‘. That state of ignorance and confusion you are condemned to pass through before you can entertain even the vaguest hope of achieving clarity and real knowledge. Well, taking a long hard look at what we know, what we think we know, and what we know [...]

“When I heard one after the other, all the new member countries, each poorer than the other, say that in the interest of reaching an agreement they would be ready to renounce some of their financial demands, I was ashamed.”
EU president Jean Claude Juncker as quoted in this BBC News article. Discuss, if you like.

Well, its the weekend, and even if domestic commitments keep me away from the beach, perhaps a lighter note is in order. The press have gotten hold of the Polish ‘anti-plummer’:
“He is blond, strapping and sexy. He holds the tools of his trade in a suggestive pose. But the news for the French people is [...]

The papers this morning seem to be all full of ‘gloomy’ articles whose principal theme is that Europe has finally been plunged into a grave crisis by this weeks summit.
“People will tell you next that Europe is not in a crisis,” Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, who holds the EU presidency, said after [...]

The results of the Freedom Blog Awards organised by Reporters Without Borders are in.
Reporters Without Borders selected around 60 blogs that, each in their own way, defend freedom of expression. The organisation then asked Internet-users to vote for the prize-winners - one in each geographical category.
Go see. There are also a couple of European [...]

But in which direction does it lead…….?
German lawmakers approved a bill Friday that would allow older unemployed people to collect jobless benefits for longer than previously planned, a move that comes as the government struggles in polls ahead of elections expected in September.
In unpopular reform introduced earlier this year gradually scales down benefits for the [...]

The OECD has a new country report out on France:
“France’s rising government debt threatens the sustainability of public finances in the eurozone’s second biggest economy, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned in its latest country report.
The Paris-based OECD said that a lack of control over public spending could leave France unprepared to [...]

There is a very interesting article in todays Financial Times. For the first time an executive board member of the ECB - Lucas Papademos - has spoken openly about the difficulties presented by having a single monetary policy for such a diverse set of economies. In fact these comments take on more significance in the [...]