Epstein Secrets

uts and tax increases) self-defeating or the unavoidable response to high budget deficits and debt? Can central banks such as the Federal Reserve or the European Central Bank engineer recovery by holding short-term interest rates near zero and by buying massive amounts of bonds (so-called "quantitative easing")? Or will

nding we'll turn into Greece any day now. After all, haven't economists proved that economic growth collapses once public debt exceeds 90 percent of G.D.P.? Well, the famous red line on debt, it turns out, was an artifact of dubious statistics, reinforced by bad arithmetic. And America isn't and can't

their leaders cannot take until all other options have failed — a state of affairs that, if you ask me, Greece is rapidly approaching. Germany and the European Central Bank could take action to make that extreme step less necessary, both by demanding less austerity and doing more to boost the European economy as a who

, collapse. But Ireland, which has done everything the austerity crowd wanted, is in terrible shape too, with unemployment near 15 percent and real G.D.P. down by double digits. Portugal and Spain are in similarly dire straits. And austerity in a slump doesn't just inflict vast suffering. There is gr

at affordable rates. Meanwhile, their banks are hemorrhaging deposits. Up until now, broke banks could prop up broke governments by borrowing from the European Central Bank and using the cash to buy their governments' bonds. But that game is over. For there is nothing the ECB can do to stop panicky Spaniards swapping

precipitate drop in government spending would equal an economic contraction of more than five hundred billion dollars, more than three per cent of G.D.P. The impact could send a fragile economy back into a recession. "It's two to three times bigger in negative terms than even the biggest year of the

Barack Obama. EFTA00586786 lo NYT An Impeccable Disaster Paul Krugman September 11, 2011 -- On Thursday Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank or E.C.B. — Europe's equivalent to Ben Bernanke — lost his sang-froid. In response to a question about whether the E.C.B. is becoming a "bad bank"

ll-scale market run on the much larger economies of Spain and Italy. At this point countries in crisis account for about a third of the euro area's G.D.P., so the common European currency itself is under existential threat. And all indications are that European leaders are unwilling even to acknowled