Monetary Easing’s the Game, but It Can’t Fix Economies By Itself
It’s all forces to the deflation front now, except when the troops are fighting inflation. Either way, monetary policy is now the confirmed fashion as all three of the leading economies—Europe, Japan, and the U.S.—simultaneously put their faith in money…
Europe Faces Anti-Austerity Mutiny as Crisis Looms
The running theme at the meeting of European Union leaders in Milan last week was, “The toolbox is empty. Nobody knows what to do next to get Europe’s economies out of the ditch.” News reports from Milan correspondents told a…
Europe’s New Recession Is One Just One of the West’s Problems
After the mini-avalanche in the markets last week, it would be comforting to conclude they are oversold and investors will soon come to their senses. Could be. But behind the clear indications of slower growth in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere,…
The Mess Obama Made on the Way to the So-Called Ceasefire in Ukraine
Assuming the ceasefire declared in Ukraine as of sundown Friday holds—and the early signs are favorable—we celebrate the end of a conflict that has claimed a startling 2,600 lives since it broke out in April. But not so fast. It’s…
The Eurozone’s So-Called Recovery Is a Bust
It’s almost a year since the eurozone was supposed to enter recovery mode. But you can’t eat statistics, as people in the southern-rim crisis nations have learned. Even now, the laser-thin growth numbers sustaining the “austerity works” argument are evaporating….
How Obama Lost Friends in Europe and Influence Globally
Bad comes to worse in the Obama administration’s ties with Europe. Obama’s trans-Atlantic crisis is less dramatic than his other foreign policy failures: Syria, Egypt, the Mideast, China. But the implications of this debacle could prove profoundly significant—politically and diplomatically,…
Cold War By Other Means
Ukraine: the Crisis in Context It is never easy to see the present as history: Being inside events, being the stuff of which events are made, makes distance and the perspective that comes of it difficult. It is not a…
The Fight to Win the Confidence of the Continent
Elections to the European parliament ended Sunday with far less commotion than those held in Ukraine the same day. In Ukraine, the polls were no more than politics as war by other means, while the EU just registered a seismometer’s…
The Sanctions Against Russia Are a Dangerous Game
Crunch time in Ukraine approaches. This is not simply because the country’s east and south are “essentially at war,” as Vasyl Krutov, the general who leads what the provisional government in Kiev insists is its “anti-terror” operation,acknowledged on Sunday. The…
Europe’s Sluggish Recovery: A Delusion of Growth
The spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which concluded Sunday, was all about our nascent global recovery. “We are at the point where the economy has turned the corner or is turning the corner of…
Recent Comments