How abnormal was the stock market in October 2008?

By: Paul De Grauwe, Leonardo Iania, Pablo Rovira Kaltwasser

Last month saw a stock market move with a probability of occurring only once in 73,357,946,799,753,

900,000,000 years. What does this tell us about modern finance?

The depression of 2009

Wrong government policies on both sides of the Atlantic are turning a crisis into a catastrophe.

Last thing Italy needs is more of the same

By: Wolfgang Munchau

The one real surprise about Italy’s rainbow coalition was not that it broke down last week but that it lasted so long. For a nine-party government that stretched from the libertarian centre to the Trotskyite left with a wafer-thin majority in the Senate, nine months in power is not bad at all. Romano Prodi did a reasonable job as prime minister to keep this bunch together. Success was never an option. It eludes me, therefore, why a further Prodi government with the same protagonists could succeed where a Prodi government has just failed.

Is the Italian economy really better than it looks?

By: Wolfgang Munchau

In today's FT, Daniel Gros argues that the doom and gloom about the Italian economy is overdone. Since I was one of the commentators who cast doubt on Italy's long-term future in the euro area, I would like to address some of the points he raised.

The real reasons to worry about wage settlements in the euro area...

By: Eurointelligence ECB Watch

... have nothing to do with Germany, but with Italy, Spain and Portugal. This could have been the year when Germany, through a generous pay round, might have reversed some of the competitiveness gains it made during the last eight years at the expense of Southern European members of EMU. We argue that not only is this not going to happen, but the competitiveness gap may actually widen again this year.

Ending turf licences is not enough for Mr Prodi

There are things you could not conceivably have thought possible until the moment you hear that they have been abolished. In this category fall the latest liberalisation measures of Romano Prodi’s rainbow coalition.