Readers Question: The government keeps claiming that their harsh (but very necessary) austerity policies are working and that they have reduced the national debt by 24%, yet your graphs seem to totally disprove this claim. If anything, your graphs seem to show that the national debt is continuing to rise quite steeply, despite the government’s …
One feature of the recent crisis has been the degree to which governments underestimated the forecast rise in government borrowing. The IMF produced a report which looked at forecast debt from 2007, and what debt actually was three years later. In ten selected countries, the increase in the gross debt ratio 31.8 2007 forecast for …
Why have countries in the Eurozone faced greater difficulties in promoting economic recovery? How does a country with its own currency find greater flexibility in overcoming a recession? 1. Impact of Currency and Bond Yields A striking feature of recent years is that countries in the Eurozone have been significantly more susceptible to rising bond …
Recently, I was researching a post on US v EU unemployment. No.1 on Google (a news result) was a post with some observations on EU vs US economic policy. This paragraph caught my attention …But many European countries have completely mismanaged their budgets for continued government stimulus, which lends to the argument of free market …
The fiscal multiplier looks at how much an initial change in injections affects real GDP. For example, if increased government spending of £1bn causes overall GDP to rise by £1.5bn, the multiplier effect is 1.5 If £1bn worth of tax rises causes real GDP to fall by £0.5bn, the multiplier effect is (0.5) Since 2009, …
How much fiscal adjustment (austerity) have Eurozone economies pursued? Underlying Primary Budget Balance in selected Eurozone economies 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 France -4.3 -3.4 -1.5 -0.5 1.3 Italy 0.3 1.4 1.6 4.5 6.2 Germany 0.8 -0.1 1.0 0.9 1.1 Greece -10.1 -4.2 0.4 3.2 5.5 Ireland -7.1 -4.7 -2.7 -0.8 0.9 Portugal -5.9 -5.1 …
Readers Question: Will Cutting Public spending bring economic growth?Do Countries with lower government spending as a % of GDP have higher economic growth rates? After recent data on -0.7% growth in Q2 2012, several experts offered suggestions for restoring economic growth to the UK. In the Guadian, Sheila Lawlor suggested (link): The UK’s output figures, …
Readers Question: What policies could Germany / the EU use to help save the Euro? The Euro has many problems. The most obvious outer problem is rising bond yields and the threat of sovereign debt default. Related to sovereign debt default is a banking default, e.g. from Spanish banks which would cause knock-on effects. But, …