Dollar, Euros and Debt

  Vito Tanzi received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University in the USA. He was the Chief of Tax Policy (1974–1981) and Director of Fiscal Affairs Department (1981–2000) at the International Monetary Fund. He was the President of the International Institute of Public Finance (1990), and Undersecretary for Economy and Finance in the Italian Government (2001). He has worked as a consultant for several international organizations and is the recipient of five honorary degrees. Tanzi has written and edited numerous publications. His most recent books are Government versus Markets (2011) and Recent Contributions to Public Economics, (in two volumes, 2011). He has published hundreds of articles in professional journals.

Table of Contents 1. Introduction 2. The Crisis and the Calls for Policy Responses 3. Central Banks as Lenders of Last Resort 4. Pressures on Germany to Help Save the Euro 5. The Fiscal Situation before the Crisis 6. The EMU Rules and Goodhart Law 7. On Public Debts, Fiscal Deficits and The Maastricht Rules 8. Fiscal Policy during the Recent Recession 9. Fiscal Policy and the Fiction of Fungible Labor 10. The EMU and the USA: What Are the Differences? 11. Trade Balances within Monetary Unions 12. Central Banks' Payment Systems within Monetary Unions 13. Strategies to Get out of the Fiscal Crises 14. Is there a Fundamental Law of Public Expenditure Growth? 15. Concluding Remarks