The Greek economic crisis started as a public debt crisis five years ago. However, despite austerity and a bold "haircut," public debt is now around 175 percent of Greek GDP. In this policy note, we argue that Greece's public debt is clearly unsustainable, and that a significant restructuring of...

As the nation watches the impact of the recent stimulus bill on job creation and economic growth, a group of academics continues to dispute the notion that the fiscal and job creation programs of the New Deal helped end the Depression. The work of these revisionist scholars has led to a public...

This policy note discusses the prospects for job creation in the US based on the most recent Levy Economics Institute Strategic Analysis report, Is the Link between Jobs and Output Broken? The results of our analysis confirm the continued weakness of the US economy in terms of job...

The United States entered the second week of a government shutdown on Monday, with no end to the deadlock in sight. The cost to the government of a similar shutdown in 1995-96 amounted to $2.1 billion in today's dollars. However, the cost and broader consequences of today's shutdown are not yet...

While serving as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Alan Greenspan advocated unsupervised securitization, subprime lending, option ARMs, credit-default swaps, and all manner of financial alchemy in the belief that markets "work" to reduce and spread risk, and to allocate it to those best...

Growing government surpluses, a ballooning trade deficit, and the resulting growth in private sector debt have placed the U.S. economy in a precarious position. Papadimitriou and Wray agree with President George W. Bush that fiscal stimulus is necessary to reinvigorate the economy; in the...

From the very start, the European Monetary Union (EMU) was set up to fail. The host of problems we are now witnessing, from the solvency crises on the periphery to the bank runs in Spain, Greece, and Italy, were built into the very structure of the EMU and its banking system. Policymakers have...

Some analysts have argued against monetary ease, fearing that it might fuel a speculative boom. Alas, given the recent substantial "market correction," this objection may safely be put away.

Neither the Breaux plan nor President Clinton's proposal for "saving" Social Security promises much gain, but the Breaux plan, unlike the president's proposal, would inflict real pain in the form of reduced benefits.

Anyone who reads a newspaper knows that most Americans have accumulated excessive levels of debt, and realizes that as interest rates climb, it becomes more difficult to service financial liabilities. To add insult to injury, wage growth has been slow, while prices--especially for energy--have...