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FT Martin Wolf
How to chart a course out of the Sino-American storm
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They came; they saw; they lost. That is the reaction to what emerged on global rebalancing at the summit meeting of the Group of 20 leading countries in Seoul last week. Publicly, surplus countries persist in calling on those in deficit to deflate themselves into economic health. The consequences of this folly are now evident in the eurozone. At the world level, the US will never accept it. But, beneath the radar, something more productive may be emerging.
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Why the Irish crisis is such a huge test for the eurozone
08:01|The fault lines in the currency union stand revealed. The promise was that the eurozone would deliver its members from currency crises. But, as I, and others, warned, be careful what you wish for: credit crises would replace currency crises – and these are likely to be even worse.Assets matter just as much as debt
05:30|Borrowing is no sin, provided we use the funds to ensure that we bequeath a better infrastructure to the future, says Martin WolfIreland refutes the German perspective
07:03|Berlin’s emphasis on deflationary adjustment in weaker countries risks turning the eurozone as a whole into a gigantic Germany, dependent on importing demand from the rest of the world, says Martin WolfThe IMF is giving some good fiscal advice
06:25|The International Monetary Fund does not normally respond to mere journalists. But its staff have explicitly rejected my arguments on the pace of fiscal consolidation in the UK. On one point – the need for a fiscal “plan B” – the IMF takes my side in the argument with the government. This is no small victory, not least because its latest report on the UK reads, in other respects, as if dictated to it by the Treasury.The Fed is right to turn on the tap
07:51|The sky is falling, scream the hysterics: the Federal Reserve is pouring forth dollars in such quantities that they will soon be worthless. Nothing could be further from the truth. As in Japan, the policy known as “quantitative easing” is far more likely to prove ineffective than lethal. It is a leaky hose, not a monetary Noah’s Flood.Current account targets are a way back to the future
08:17|The debate on “global imbalances” has gone back to the future. The proposal from Tim Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, to target the current account takes us back to the preoccupations of John Maynard Keynes at the Bretton Woods conference of July 1944.Britain has gone climbing without a rope
06:34|Martin Wolf admires the courage of the government as it launches its spending review without a Plan B but wonders whether the public will accept the necessary painWhy US voters are suing Dr Obama
08:05|A large part of the American public has forgotten the gravity of the financial heart attack that hit the US in the autumn of 2008. The Republicans have convinced many voters that the intervention by the Democrats, not the catastrophe George W Bush bequeathed, explains the malaise. Does President Obama deserve blame? No and yes, says Martin Wolf.