The global financial crisis of 2007-2009 crystallized the underlying imbalances that are currently acting to tear apart the Euro area monetary and fiscal systems by focusing markets and public attention on the core cause of the overall Euro crisis, the insolvency of the Euro area member-states...

The Great Recession has triggered an ongoing discussion on its causes and on the conditions to avoid future crises. Although the international community has considered a number of improvements in the area of policy coordination and regulation of financial markets, the implementation of such...

This paper reviews key policy messages and warnings about developments in the run-up to the global financial and economic crisis that began in mid-2007 which are contained in the main publications of the IMF, the OECD and the BIS and discuss issues relevant to strengthening their surveillance...

During the recent financial crisis, the Federal Reserve implemented a series of extraordinary and unconventional policies to alleviate the impact of the crisis on financial markets and the economy. In this paper, we examine the effects of these policies on broad financial market conditions,...

This paper investigates the causes behind the euro debt crisis, particularly Germany's role in it. It is argued that the crisis is not primarily a “sovereign debt crisis” but rather a (twin) banking and balance of payments crisis. Intra-area competitiveness and current account imbalances,...

The paper evaluates the fiscal policy initiatives during the Great Recession in the United States. It argues that, although the nonconventional fiscal policies targeted at the financial sector dwarfed the conventional countercyclical stabilization efforts directed toward the real sector, the...

The financial collapse of 2007 witnessed free fall of “debt-financed euphoria” caused by complex set of regulations and policies, enacted to direct modern capitalism. The action and policies of regulatory institutions facilitated financial institutions to indulge in risky lending and thus,...

In this paper the euro crisis is interpreted as the latest episode in the crisis of finance-dominated capitalism. For 11 initial Euro area countries, the major features of finance-dominated capitalism are analyzed; specifically, the increasing inequality of income distribution and the rising...

This paper investigates the long-run recovery experience of U.S. banks that received capital infusions under the Capital Purchase Program (CPP), a part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Based on a dynamic recovery model, our results show that recovering CPP banks tended to be in...

The Italian economy is going through its deepest contraction in history. Even more worrisome is the negative trend in productivity and capacity to export, which has persisted since the early 1990s. The paper analyzes the root causes of these twin evils, as well as the linkages between them. An...