Dollar, Euros and Debt (eBook)

  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 severalinternational organizations and is the recipient of five honorary degrees. Tanzi haswritten and edited numerous publications. His most recent books are Governmentversus Markets (2011) and Recent Contributions to Public Economics, (in two volumes, 2011). He has published hundreds of articles in professional journals.

Cover 1
Half-Title 2
Title 4
Copyright 5
Contents 6
Preface and Acknowledgments 7
1 Introduction 10
2 The Crisis and the Calls for Policy Responses 19
3 Central Banks as Lenders of Last Resort 30
4 The Pressures on Germany to Help Save the Euro 44
5 The Fiscal Situation before the Crisis 51
6 The EMU Rules and Goodhart’s Law 57
7 On Public Debts, Fiscal Deficits, and the Maastricht Rules 69
8 Fiscal Policy During the Recent Crisis 76
9 Fiscal Policy and the Fiction of Fungible Labor 94
10 The EMU and the USA: What Are the Differences? 100
11 Trade Balances within Monetary Unions 114
12 On Central Banks’ Payment Systems within Unions 121
13 Strategies to Get Out of the Fiscal Crisis 137
14 Is There a Fundamental Law of Public Expenditure Growth? 155
15 Concluding Remarks 171
References 179
Index 186