A repository of solutions to global problems

For two years now, leading policy makers, academics and businessmen have been meeting for discussions in the Global Economic Symposium to provide concrete solutions for the most pressing global governance issues the world will be facing this century. Here is the result of these discussions: a repository of concrete policy proposals.

A test calibrated to fix the result

By: Wolfgang Münchau

If you tried to test the safety of cars using the same method, you would end up in jail.

Eurozone Meltdown

This is the first in a new series of regular briefing notes on important issues facing the euro area. In this briefing note we are asking whether the euro area could ever break up. We think not. But we are not as certain as we used to be.

Why the euro should prevail

By: Eric Chaney

Will the euro area survive its debt crisis? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is, this is a conditional probability, not a certainty. The conditions are an orderly resolution of the current tensions and the implementation of three sets of reforms.

The end of muddling through is nigh

By: Wolfgang Münchau

One of the aggravating problems in this crisis is the financial illiteracy of Europe's political classes.

One Fiscal Size Does Not Fit All – a Korean lesson for Spain

By: Adam Posen

Twelve years ago, the Asian Financial Crisis hit. The International Monetary Fund took a common approach across the crisis countries, prioritizing fiscal austerity. In retrospect, outside observers and the Fund itself came to the conclusion that this was a mistake – while appropriate for Indonesia, the ‘It’s Mostly Fiscal’ approach made the situation worse than it needed to be in South Korea, with negative spillovers for the rest of the region. The euro area governments, under pressure from Berlin and Brussels, are repeating this mistake.

Suffocating Europe

By: Jörg Bibow

The real irony in this German tragedy is that German beggar-thy-neighbor policies have effectively forced a fiscal union upon Europe. Or, rather, if not a fiscal union, a general default it will be.