Finance Blog

Ha! The US Federal Reserve has lost its nerve and left the punch bowl at the party table. The markets were genuinely, and pleasantly, surprised by this apparent act of largesse, even though nobody was expecting anymore than a marginal taper in the first place. The S & P 500 surged to a new record,… Read more

The German public will this week vote for a new government. As I’ve argued before, there won’t be any quantum leap towards more eurozone integration aft the elections, as some hope, but what do German voters think about the EU in general? Well, a new Open Europe and Open Europe Berlin poll published today illustrates… Read more

Was it really such a sensible idea for the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England to have supplemented their inflation targets with a separate unemployment target? Probably not, for it looks ever more likely that employment is not a particularly good indicator of the amount of slack in the economy, and therefore the… Read more

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has been vindicated. For my part, I have been wrong about everything. German discipline policies for the eurozone have been a tremendous success. I am ashamed for suggesting otherwise. As the wise, patient, and always self-effacing Mr Schäuble writes today in The Financial Times, the Euro-sceptics talk and write relentless… Read more

Germany's euro break-up party – Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) – has unveiled its foreign policy. It is pure Bismarck. "Germany and Europe have no interest in a further weakening of Russia," said Alexander Gauland, AfD's foreign affairs chief. "Germany's relations with Russia should be managed with meticulous care." What they say is no longer an academic… Read more

As silly suggestions go, they don't come much sillier than the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors's proposed 5 per cent house price cap. To be clear, Rics is not suggesting the introduction of a sort of Prices Commission for the housing market, with officials touring the country to make sure that no house price can… Read more

Adair Turner, former chairman of Britain's Financial Services Authority, has written an interesting article on Project Syndicate in which he addresses a number of key and interrelated questions about the financial crisis. The first is why recovery has taken so long, or not happened at all in some cases, confounding predictions of the V shaped… Read more

So, we now know: Silvio Berlusconi seriously floated plans to pull Italy out of the euro in October/November 2011, precipitating his immediate removal from office and decapitation by EMU policy gendarmes. Ex-ECB insider Lorenzo Bini-Smaghi has quietly dropped a few bombshells in his new book Morire di Austerita (Dying of Austerity), worth a read if… Read more

I don't know about you, but I'm bored stiff by the austerity versus growth debate, so let this be my final word on the subject – until I'm forced to write about it again of course. Simon Wren-Lewis, Professor of Economics at Merton College, Oxford, is fast emerging as Britain's very own Paul Krugman, with… Read more

Crises tend to make or break institutions; with the eurozone debt crisis, it is already plain which has risen to the occassion, and which has essentially been broken by it. After a slow and hesitant start, the European Central Bank has grown steadily bolder, and ended up having a pretty good war; decisive action under… Read more