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It's not lazy thinking, it's realistic thinking. Your idea doesn't sound viable to me... You already have all these pundits making their views known in the media, papers, etc? Unless you have a mechanism of enforcing that these views are actually taken into account in the decision-making...

I am not ignoring the point you're making, pm... I am not suggesting all is perfectly well in Eastern Europe. Clearly, Hungary is in a proper bind, as are the Baltics. All I am saying is that, to me, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovakia actually don't look like the candidates for the next...

I don't know about the Spooz. I think there's a real divergence between the large firms that constitute the main indices and the real economy. To get a sense of it, I look at the NFIB confidence numbers vs the PMIs. In general, my view is that the deleveraging process has to happen and that...

I don't know, man... There's a lot of people here that love to regurgitate the stuff that the tinfoil hat brigade produces.

Well, the Wiki data comes directly from the IMF World Economic Outlook. The link is provided, so I don't really see why you'd assume that this information is less trustworthy than the Eurostat data. Secondly, you can't just look at the deficit figures in countries like Poland and the Czech...

No, it's not better now... Why do you start with 2000? Why do you sum up the figures, if not to arrive at some sort of a debt/GDP number? Finally, what's wrong with data publicly available from the IMF already? You will find it here (scroll down to the "Economies of Member States"...

Well, for its merits, free markets have flaws. Do you really really really want a completely free, totally unregulated mkt? [B] Well, the historical record doesn't really agree with you... Historically, a lot of academic research has been done to demonstrate that boom and bust cycles were...

Well, now we're blaming the Fed for all the world's ills. As long as we're doing that, why don't we also give them credit for Volcker? I am all for good external input, I just don't really know where to find it. Do you think politicians are where it's at? Personally, I strongly disagree...

Sure, I agree the Fed has been lax in dealing with the bubble. However, this can be said of everyone, including the idiot punters buying subprime RMBS til' they can't see straight. If you figure out how to deal with these issues, pls do let me know. [B] The Fed has been audited, in a...

Firstly, pls feel free to suggest an alternative and let's see how it fares. Secondly, the basic idea of the Fed is not that it's the actual counterparty on all these Federal Reserve notes. In simplistic terms, the Central Bank is like an exchange where money trades. Everything follows out of...

Well, I don't know... Are you making this conclusion on the sole basis of what the Fed is doing? Moreover, even if you only look at the Fed, how can you say that, while Volcker is still alive and kicking? In the UK, Mervyn King is just about the only good thing that's happened recently. How...

Sorry, who are these mythical "THE PEOPLE"? I have never met them... Don't you mean to say "give back the power of the money to the people's elected representatives, the politicians"? I'll only agree to this if you solemnly promise me and guarantee that the politicians in Congress...

I think Debaser is referring to specifically those exceptional rare cases where there are specific decisions to be made "to bail or not to bail". In these cases, it's got nothing to do with monetary policy and interest rates.

Please, please stop the nonsense, I beg of you!!!! I can't handle any more coconuts posting utter drivel. Before attempting to criticize the current system at least acquire a most basic understanding of how it works.

Given the structure of current Western democracies, there's going to be a room full of old men that will be making these decisions, no matter how you slice it. Whether these people are elected or not is largely irrelevant, IMHO, given that we're not really that good at electing intelligent...

It's just the EUR exchange rate, innit?

It's just the Belgian in you talking, I know it :)!

+1

Wow, this is getting better and better... Treasuries "creating reserves" for the banking system!!! Haven't heard that one before.

I don't really understand... So you've taken annual budget deficit/GDP from 2000 and summed them up, right? The "Cumulative Total" row is supposed to give you the latest public debt/GDP in %? Firstly, there's some issues with your calculation. Secondly, even if your calculations are...