• Insight by Philip Whyte, 20 June 2011

    Back in 2007, when the Labour government had abolished the business cycle and the City of London was booming, British policy-makers liked to vaunt the merits of ‘light touch’ regulation.

  • Opinion piece by Charles Grant
    The Times, 20 June 2011

    A single European currency has the merit of encouraging trade and investment across frontiers, and thus growth. But countries with inflexible, badly-run economies should never have been allowed to join the euro. The sooner the eurozone shrinks, the sooner it will stabilise.

  • Opinion piece by Simon Tilford
    Les Echos, 20 June 2011

    Une mauvaise compréhension de ce que sont les moteurs de la croissance économique menace la reprise en Europe. Ses dirigeants sont obsédés par la compétitivité et paraissent croire sincèrement que prospérité rime avec excédent commercial.

  • Opinion piece by Simon Tilford
    Project Syndicate, 16 June 2011

    A flawed understanding of what drives economic growth has emerged as the gravest threat to recovery in Europe. European policymakers are obsessed with national “competitiveness,” and genuinely appear to think that prosperity is synonymous with trade surpluses.

  • Bulletin article by Philip Whyte, 01 June 2011

    In March, European leaders agreed a 'grand bargain' that was designed to restore flagging confidence in the eurozone. The deal, they hoped, would return the most troubled countries – Greece, Ireland and Portugal – to debt sustainability and prevent catastrophic contagion to other, larger economies such as Italy and Spain.

  • Insight by Philip Whyte, 21 May 2011

    When EU finance ministers met in Brussels on 18 May, many observers expected sparks to fly. The reason? This was the first EU meeting that Britain’s newly-elected government would attend.

  • Opinion piece by Simon Tilford
    Financial Times, 12 May 2011

    Even as the ink is drying on Portugal's European Union and International Monetary Fund bail-out agreement, evidence is mounting that last year's bail-outs of Greece and Ireland have failed. Far from improving their access to the financial markets, Greece and Ireland face record borrowing costs.

  • Insight by Simon Tilford, 09 May 2011

    Even as the ink is still drying on Portugal’s EU/IMF ‘bail-out’ agreement, it is becoming clear that Greece’s 2010 bail-out has failed to improve the sustainability of its public finances.