How to restructure the debt associated with Ireland's banking collapse.

Economic policy-making rarely amounts to picking the best possible policy suggested by economic theory. In a choice between an overly-restrictive and badly-designed fiscal compact and the potential alternative of being denied funding for our fiscal deficit next year (and the more extreme possibilities of sovereign default or exit from the Euro) we should stick with the European project and hope we can work to improve its design in the future.

Last Friday’s summit agreement made very little progress in solving the Euro area crisis and has left us with a lot of uncertainty about the legal and political developments of the next few months.

The European Union wants to regulate and reform the credit ratings industry. This post evaluate's the Commission's proposals in this area and asks whether something more radical is required.

Ratings agencies are not popular in Europe today. As Standard and Poor’s warn the whole Eurozone that it might be about to be downgraded, European politicians have been retaliating with strong language and with new regulations for the ratings agency industry. This post focuses on the role of the ratings agencies in the crisis and the criticisms that European officials and politicians have levelled at the industry.

Eurosummits now follow now a well-established pattern in which an initially positive response is followed by a realisation that serious problems have not been solved.  However, none of the previous agreements have come apart quite as quickly as last Wednesday’s summit deal. Greek Prime Minister Papandreou’s surprise decision to seek a referendum on the bailout package agreed at the meeting has derailed the process put in place last week and the period ahead threatens to be chaotic.

This is the last of three posts reflecting on Trichet’s period in charge of the European Central Bank and the prospects for his successor, Mario Draghi. Prof. Karl Whelan focus on the ECB’s Securities Market Programme and the challenges ahead for Mr Draghi.

This is the second of three posts reflecting on Trichet’s period in charge of the European Central Bank and the prospects for his successor, Mario Draghi.

With Jean-Claude Trichet about to depart from the presidency of the ECB, this is the first of three posts reflecting on Trichet’s period in charge and the prospects for his successor, Mario Draghi.

University College Dublin's Prof. Karl Whelan argues that debt brakes don’t solve the Eurozone’s problems and are bad economics.

The absence of any common fiscal framework is being felt more severely than anticipated by the Euro’s founders. The current set of asymmetric shocks damaging the eurozone creates a very difficult environment for a common monetary policy.

In this article, Prof. Karl Whelan discusses the pressures on the European Central Bank's interest rate policy and makes the case for a slow and gradual pace of rate increases.

Hans-Werner Sinn is a leading German economist and president of the influential Ifo Institute. Sinn has recently written some columns that are extremely critical of the operation of the Eurosystem. Sinn’s analysis has been cited approvingly by many high-profile commentators, such as Martin Wolf and Paul Krugman.  Unfortunately, Professor Sinn’s analysis is incorrect and his policy prescriptions are extremely dangerous.