Can He Sell Austerity?

A five-day drama to form the new ‘coalition government’ has come to an end. Lucas Papademos will be Greece’s 11th PM and along with his new cabinet, will lead the country through a transitional phase, aiming at securing the 6th and 7th tranches from the bailout funds as well as locking in the new rescue package essential..

Abusing Referendums

It seemed things had been put in order after last Wednesday’s EU summit in Brussels. EU leaders had collectively decided upon a comprehensive rescue package that would help Greece write-down its huge debt, recapitalize troubled European banks, and leverage..

Why Save the Eurozone?

The euro is definitely worth preserving. It’s existence is at the best interest of all of its member states. Conflicts of national interests, the ruthless financial markets, and political miscommunication, are the major threats to the future of this currency. France and Germany, Europe’s most influential states, have an obligation to..

Greek Debt Crisis: A Country Under Modern Occupation

It’s been more than a year since Greece signed the notorious EU-IMF €110 bln aid package in an attempt to deter the country’s economic default. Today, Greece faces even greater challenges, domestic and external. This week’s cabinet reshuffling aimed at unifying the ruling party to make it able to..

A ‘Currency-Cold War’ in the Making?

Although global economic recovery is underway, it’s also being uneven. On my last post I examined the potential effects of the newly-formed Basel III rules on global recovery and concluded to their minor impact. Today, however, global recovery is facing a new challenge; the prospect of a currency war between two giants..

Is Basel III a Threat to Global Recovery?

The question to ask here is, do we want a recovery similar to the previous ones in nature so as to end up here once again and start blaming the ‘system’? A rational answer would be NO, but I will get back to that in a bit..

Fiscal Adjustment Set as Top Priority from G20

The G20 summit in Toronto was highly anticipated due to the vast number of threats the global economy is currently facing. China’s move, days before the summit, to slightly appreciate its currency (yuan) was a good warm-up for the summit as it cleared the road for..

Decision-Time for the ‘International Bank Tax’

Ever since the global financial crisis burst in 2008, there has been an ongoing debate about the prospect of imposing levies on banks and their transactions to form a fund that would prevent the repetition of potential bank collapses (i.e. Lehman Bros.) that could jeopardise the global financial web. This is one of the hottest topics on the EU agenda awaiting..