The euro – no better than bitcoin?

Keeping the flag flying for the euro

Published on 2th September 2023

This piece appeared as a Comment in the Daily Express. It is about the implications of the European Stability Mechanism being so weak, given that it is the main backing for the euro:https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1799489/EU-latest-news-euro-against-pound-euro-collapse

Digital currencies – bitcoin, stablecoin, Britcoin et al – makes your head spin. […]

European Stability Mechanism hanging by a thread on France’s credit rating

Published on 5th September 2023

The Daily Express picked up on my article pubished through IREF about the European Stability Mechanism:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1797868/eurozone-euro-eu-france-credit-rating

The ESM’s firepower – to back the debts of Eurozone member states and thereby to act as the backstop for the currency itself – depends upon its having backers of sufficient size and with high enough […]

UK’s debt is NOT larger than the EU’s

Bruges Group book summary

Published on 5th September 2023

The Campaign for an Independent Britain published this piece that the UK’s debt is not larger than the EU’s as the Daily Telegraph had claimed, if the EU member states’ shadow debts and contingent liabilities are factored in:https://cibuk.org/eurozone-debt-dwarfs-that-of-the-uk/

My figures on the EU are drawfrom my book ‘The shadow […]

InvestEU, NetZero and the growing debts of EU citizens

As presented at the IES-IREF Summer University in Aix 20-22 July 2023

Published on 27th July 2023

I made a presentation at the IES-IREF Summer University in Aix-en-Provence about an aspect of my book, ‘The shadow liabilities of EU Member States, and the threat they pose to global financial stability’.

The relevant aspect is the build-up of off-balance […]

The European Stability Mechanism hangs by a thread – on France’s credit rating

The ESM and its image

Published on 26th July 2023

As previously published on IREF Europe: https://en.irefeurope.org/publications/online-articles/article/the-european-stability-mechanism-hangs-by-a-thread-on-frances-credit-rating/

Introduction

The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) backstops the euro. Its nominal size is €705 billion but its lending capacity is lower at €500 billion, and the main condition attached to that is that the member states guarantees of the ESM’s solvency […]

Eurozone’s ‘shadow debts’ start to become real ones, and threaten the Bundesbank with bankruptcy

Published by The Bruges Group on 29 June 2023

Published on 7th July 2023

The German Federal Audit Office (‘Bundesrechnungshof’) has warned that the Bundesbank may need a bailout due to losses on the EUR650 billion of bonds it bought as part of the Eurozone’s equivalent of Quantitative Easing. The Daily Telegraph reported on this on 26 […]