Portugal could avoid Greece's horrible fate if it were to draw the right lessons from the Greek experience.

Desmond Lachman's response to Daniel Gros's article, "Portugal is Delaying the Pain it Knows is Inevitable."

Sir, Lawrence Summers is certainly correct in asserting that the right focus of the European countries must be on restoring economic growth if they are to restore fiscal sustainability (“Growth not austerity is the best...

If the European Union now accedes to Portuguese prime minister José Sócrates’ request last night for emergency funding to tide Portugal over until after its June 5 election, it will demonstrate that the European Commission is offering the Britannia of old some serious competition in the realm of disregarding its own rules.

The economic recessions in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal will become deeper if the IMF and the EU don't recognize that the countries in the periphery suffer from solvency rather than liquidity problems--which are not amenable to correction by fiscal retrenchment alone in a fixed exchange rate system.

The main problem with the recent IMF programmes to countries such as Greece and Portugal has not been one of size or duration but rather one of policy misdiagnosis. 

The ongoing sovereign debt crisis in Europe continues to weigh heavily oncredit markets and political systems throughout the developed world. 

Greece's economic and political unraveling could not be coming at a worse moment for President Obama. The crisis has the potential to send shock waves not simply through Europe but also through global financial markets on the very eve of the U.S. presidential election.