In the past 6 years the Greek economy has gone through a massive adjustment at a steep price. The economy finally grew in 2014, by 0.6 percent, but the recovery is weak, slow and fragile. This paper argues that prolonged mass unemployment and reduced living standards, brought about by years of...

This paper explores the potential impact of the Federal Reserve Board’s decision on interest rates on the budget deficit. The first part recounts the history of the 1990s surplus, correcting the widely held misunderstanding that this surplus was achieved by the Clinton administration’s tax...

With Spain’s official unemployment rate at 26 percent, and the economy projected to contract by 1.3 percent this year, it is difficult to make the case for continued austerity that could push a barely growing economy back into recession. Yet the government is committed to further fiscal...

Venezuela’s current growth is generally described as unsustainable, with various negative scenarios put forth, including spiraling debt, inflation, and balance of payments crises. However, these pessimistic forecasts have been far off the mark for most of the past decade. This paper looks at...

This study produces calculations of the amount of money being dispersed by the government to the 16 primary dealers and investment banks who qualify to borrow through the special lending facilities created in the last year by the Federal Reserve Board under the assumption that each borrows in...

This paper shows that, in spite of a reasonably sized fiscal stimulus package, Costa Rica’s economy continues on a downward path, partly because fiscal policy is being offset by a tightening of monetary policy. The paper notes that the International Monetary Fund has insisted that Costa...

This paper looks at the trends in activity at the Federal Reserve’s newly-created special lending facilities, hoping to provide a better understanding of their operation and significance within financial markets. These facilities were created in response to the financial crisis and have...

This paper makes the case for a third stimulus package to in the face of economic indicators signaling that the economy is in a deeper downturn than was expected based on previous projections. Specifically, the report calls for an employer tax-credit for extending health care coverage and...

The new economic projections from the Congressional Budget Office show the economy remaining well below its potential level of output until 2014. The projections show the unemployment rate averaging 10.2 percent in 2010 and gradually edging down to the long-term sustainable rate of 4.8 percent...

This paper looks briefly at the recent inflation experiences of ten Latin American countries: Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Bolivia. The authors construct a core inflation index (excluding food and energy), and look at...