július 28. 07:13 | Before the recent financial crisis, politicians on both sides of the aisle in the United States egged on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant government-backed mortgage agencies, to support low-income lending in their constituencies. There was a deeper concern behind this newly discovered passion for housing for the poor: growing income inequality.

július 27. 05:00 | The global economy, artificially boosted since the recession of 2008-2009 by massive monetary and fiscal stimulus and financial bailouts, is headed towards a sharp slowdown this year as the effect of these measures wanes. Worse yet, the fundamental excesses that fueled the crisis – too much debt and leverage in the private sector (households, banks and other financial institutions, and even much of the corporate sector) – have not been addressed.

július 22. 05:00 | A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of “market confidence.” It may have been fear of communism that agitated governments when Karl Marx penned the opening line of his famous manifesto in 1848, but today it is the dread that market sentiment will turn against them and drive up the spreads on their bonds.

július 20. 05:00 | It was not long ago that we could say, “We are all Keynesians now.” The financial sector and its free-market ideology had brought the world to the brink of ruin. Markets clearly were not self-correcting. Deregulation had proven to be a dismal failure.

július 13. 05:00 | After the European Central Bank announced on May 9 that it would buy the government bonds of Mediterranean countries experiencing severe fiscal strains, critics complained that the Bank had “lost its virginity.” The actions looked like a clear contravention of Article 21 of the ECB’s Statute, which forbids credit facilities to governments or to European Union institutions.

július 6. 05:00 | China’s GDP growth this year may approach 10%. While some countries are still dealing with economic crisis or its aftermath, China’s challenge is – once again – how to manage a boom.

július 5. 11:31 | Despite huge rescue packages, interest-rate spreads in Europe refuse to budge. Markets have not yet found their equilibrium, and the governments on Europe’s southwestern rim are nervously watching how events unfold. What is going on?

július 1. 05:00 | Monetary and fiscal policies in the United States, both in this recession and the recession of 2001, have been among the most accommodating in the industrial world.

június 29. 05:00 | Germany used to be at the heart of European integration. Its statesmen used to assert that Germany had no independent foreign policy, only a European policy. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, its leaders realized that German reunification was possible only in the context of a united Europe, and they were willing to make some sacrifices to secure European acceptance. Germans would contribute a little more and take a little less than others, thereby facilitating agreement.

június 17. 05:00 | There is an ongoing debate among global policymakers about when and how fast to exit from the strong monetary and fiscal stimulus that prevented the Great Recession of 2008-2009 from turning into a new Great Depression. Germany and the European Central Bank are pushing aggressively for early fiscal austerity; the United States is worried about the risks of excessively early fiscal consolidation.