Category Archives: News/ Lessons

From the “You can’t make this stuff up” department

From today’s Open Europe news summary: Irish Finance Minister Michael Noonan said yesterday that he would not dismiss the idea of a European conference to discuss a possible debt write-down for crisis-hit Eurozone countries such as Greece, Ireland and Spain. … Continue reading

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Maastricht Treaty? We don’t need no Maastricht Treaty.

From today’s Open Europe news summary: Bank of France Governor Christian Noyer told Handelsblatt that, if the ECB were to buy government bonds, he would favour “a cap” in terms of percentage of the market which the ECB can buy. Handelsblatt Le … Continue reading

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Maybe Italy should raise the minimum wage

From today’s Open Europe news summary: Preliminary estimates by the Italian national statistics office ISTAT show that Italy’s unemployment rate went up to 13.4% in November, with youth unemployment soaring to 43.9% – a new record high. La Repubblica ISTAT Il Sole … Continue reading

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A statement full of Keynesian fallacies

From today’s Open Europe news summary: Draghi: ECB ready to initiate QE to counter low inflation In an interview with Handelsblatt, ECB President Mario Draghi warned that persistently low inflation in the Eurozone meant that “the risk that we do not … Continue reading

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The Case Against Economic Intervention

The basic unit of all economic activity is the un-coerced, free exchange of one economic good for another based upon the ordinally ranked subjective preferences of each party to the exchange. To achieve maximum satisfaction from the exchange each party … Continue reading

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Russia takes a page out of the Paul Volcker playbook

From Zero Hedge: Russia Shocks With Emergency  Rate Hike The move by the Bank of Russia to drastically raise rates is the first break by a major central bank in the worldwide Keynesian dogma that lower rates are required to … Continue reading

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Dollars will come home when overseas demand to hold them drops Spare Dollars by Alasdair Macleod It is very interesting that Alasdair mentions that there is increasingly little need for the Petrodollar market, since most of the Middle East’s oil … Continue reading

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Denmark joins Switzerland in mad rush to destroy its currency

Denmark promises to match the ECB’s money printing craze First the normally sane Swiss promise to match the European Central Bank’s money printing mania. Now the Danes’ have succumbed to the same insane fever. These central bankers harbor the fallacious … Continue reading

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Are these two events linked?

From today’s Open Europe news summary: According to documents seen by Reuters, Eurozone finance ministers are considering extending Greece’s bail-out programme, due to end this year, by six months to the middle of 2015. However, a Greek government official insisted that … Continue reading

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Will someone please stop this man before he hurts himself?

From today’s Open Europe news summary: Juncker unveils his €315bn investment package for Europe Speaking to the European Parliament this morning, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker unveiled his plan for a €315bn investment fund – backed by €8bn from the … Continue reading

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