Categories
Economics

Europe: a house of cards

EUROPEAN leaders have tried to characterise the October writedown of Greek debt as “private-sector involvement”. While the writedown would appear to be a default in all but name, efforts to maintain investor confidence have so far been surprisingly successful. Yesterday, US stocks and Asian stocks rallied amid optimism that European leaders are taking steps to […]

Categories
Economics

Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds

THE MARKETS have been temporarily buoyed amid optimism that European leaders will find a solution to the debt crisis.  Unfortunately, the optimism is likely to be short lived because the problem with Greece is not just that they owe everyone a lot of money.  Greek debt is a symptom of a more endemic problem rooted in the […]

Categories
Economics

Helping the 99%

WITH the Occupy Wall Street movement still in full swing, we have to stop and think for a moment about the distribution of wealth in the world. One of the slogans of the Occupy Wall Street movement is “we are the 99%”, which is a reference to the fact that the top 1% of households […]