While markets are again correctly obsessing over Italy and Spain’s poor economic growth prospects, as reflected in markedly higher government bond yields for those two countries, they seem to have taken their eye off two upcoming political events that could usher in a new and more serious phase of the...

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...

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

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. 

On April 5, 2012, the President signed into law the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which passed by a large bipartisan majority in the Congress. The Act is designed to facilitate the equity funding of new companies. Recent research has documented that from 1980 through the 2008-09 recession new companies have been main drivers of job creation in the United States. 

President Obama attacked Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget as “nothing but thinly veiled Social Darwinism.” That is not surprising. What is surprising is that the chairman of a major committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops launched a similar scathing attack against Ryan.

On April 13, 2012, the US Department of the Treasury released new cost estimates for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Looking principally at actual and projected contractual cash flows, the document concludes that: "Overall, the government is now expected to at least break even on its financial stability programs and may realize a positive return." 

No one with a heart or with a brain can dispute that total cancellation of the debt of the world's poorest nations is a given in our collective progress toward global economic balance.