By Friday of last week good money was bettingagainst the UK pound but by Monday morning the Euro was back in the frame, courtesy of an Italian election that looked likely to favor anti-austerity politicians.
By Tuesday it’s looking as though the Italian election will drag the Euro back into crisis, as it ended in deadlock.
According to The Telegraph: “ Europe’s bourses remain a sea of red this lunchtime….The FTSE 100 is off 1.4pc to 6266, Italy’s MIB is down4.6pc to 15594, France’s CAC is 2.4pc lower at 3632 and Germany’s DAX is 1.9pc lower at 7629There’s some madness at work here.
On the one hand the UK fully deserved its Moody’s downgrade. There is a policy vacuum in Britain with austerity the only policy that its Government seems able to countenance.
And on the other, if the Italians do elect an anti-austerity Government then the response should be hurrah. The big omission in Europe is exactly the same as that in the UK – an almost total absence of ideas on how to re-gear the economy for changing times.
And in that vacuum, cuts and austerity are given the appearance of a legitimate response. A month back Dr Tim Gordon published an analysis of the long term effects of this policy vacuum against a background of unprecedented indebtedness.
It makes for unhappy but realistic reading for the US economy and it provides a starting point for a fantasy-free policy response to American decline as well as for the British.
Soon after Bain and Co published a report indicating that, because of an unprecedented capital surplus, now is the ideal time to make long term transitional investments in infrastructure and new industries. All it takes is an industrial policy.
There are plenty of ideas around for kick-starting and diversifying growth. The problem though is that for the political class and the commentariat this is all about old spending vs virtuous fiscal management politics.
But we’ve gone beyond that. It’s a new economy out there, underpinned by new levels of technological capability and new manifestations of wealth creation in the Cloud and Crowd.
That change demands new ideas and real policy innovations. Europe’s unmanageable Eurozone, meanwhile, is back center stage and well capable of providing high drama through the spring.
In the absence of imaginative, innovative growth policies, what else would you expect?
It’s Italy’s turn to take the Euro down.
forbes.com
By Tuesday it’s looking as though the Italian election will drag the Euro back into crisis, as it ended in deadlock.
According to The Telegraph: “ Europe’s bourses remain a sea of red this lunchtime….The FTSE 100 is off 1.4pc to 6266, Italy’s MIB is down4.6pc to 15594, France’s CAC is 2.4pc lower at 3632 and Germany’s DAX is 1.9pc lower at 7629There’s some madness at work here.
On the one hand the UK fully deserved its Moody’s downgrade. There is a policy vacuum in Britain with austerity the only policy that its Government seems able to countenance.
And on the other, if the Italians do elect an anti-austerity Government then the response should be hurrah. The big omission in Europe is exactly the same as that in the UK – an almost total absence of ideas on how to re-gear the economy for changing times.
And in that vacuum, cuts and austerity are given the appearance of a legitimate response. A month back Dr Tim Gordon published an analysis of the long term effects of this policy vacuum against a background of unprecedented indebtedness.
It makes for unhappy but realistic reading for the US economy and it provides a starting point for a fantasy-free policy response to American decline as well as for the British.
Soon after Bain and Co published a report indicating that, because of an unprecedented capital surplus, now is the ideal time to make long term transitional investments in infrastructure and new industries. All it takes is an industrial policy.
There are plenty of ideas around for kick-starting and diversifying growth. The problem though is that for the political class and the commentariat this is all about old spending vs virtuous fiscal management politics.
But we’ve gone beyond that. It’s a new economy out there, underpinned by new levels of technological capability and new manifestations of wealth creation in the Cloud and Crowd.
That change demands new ideas and real policy innovations. Europe’s unmanageable Eurozone, meanwhile, is back center stage and well capable of providing high drama through the spring.
In the absence of imaginative, innovative growth policies, what else would you expect?
It’s Italy’s turn to take the Euro down.
forbes.com
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