An austere 2012

di Luca Macedoni

We are getting used to a constant flow of depressing macroeconomic data. On January the 31st Eurostat released the latest news on unemployment: in December 2011 10.4% of the working population in the Euro Area was looking for a job. This value, that is the highest since 1999, is even worse for young workers: the youth unemployment in the Euro Area is 21.3%, with an Italian peak of 31[1].

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A debt problem? No, this is a problem of high unemployment

di Giacomo Saibene

On 26 June 2011 the Bank for International Settlement, the world’s oldest international financial organization based in Basel, Switzerland, published it 81st Annual Report. Amidst the authorities’ concerns regarding the Greek debt crisis, the prospects of failure to raise the U.S. debt limit on the 2nd of August, and the nomination of a new IMF managing director, the BIS report provides the following major insights, which regard fiscal and monetary policy in particular and can be summarized through the following sentences:

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