Wednesday, May 30, 2012

No State is a (Greek) Island

My take on the European rumblings about fiscal union came out today in the WSJ:  unions http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304707604577428211717125298.html

Basically, the Greman take on fiscal union is the opposite of what the U.S. fiscal union has done for the last hundred years.  Ours serves as a way to ease adjustments that the lack of a flexible exchange rate between states makes problematic.  The discipline based fiscal union just makes those worse.

 

4 comments:

  1. hmm. looks like wsj gates it unless you google search it by name

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  2. Austan -- Help us out with this, from Tim Duy: http://economistsview.typepad.com/timduy/2012/06/this-is-just-sad.html.

    The Fed just lowered its inflation projection for 2012 to well below 2 percent. It projects core inflation at or below 2 percent for this year and next. It projects sluggish GDP growth (as does everyone else). And it projects that we will still be at 7.5-8% unemployment in 2013.

    And yet the Fed does next-to-nothing.

    I thought we wanted rules, not discretion, in monetary policy? Or is the rule just "the Fed will step in to avert disaster, but not to deliver meaningful growth".

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