Sunday, January 18, 2015

Relaxing State Deficit Restrictions: Power-Grab by the European Commission

As the World Bank came out with its revised prediction of 1.1 percent economic growth for the E.U. (“eurozone”) in 2015, down from the earlier estimate of 1.8%,[1] the European Commission announced that it would allow states more leeway in meeting the federal requirement that state budget deficits be no more than 3 percent of their respective economic outputs. Lest this appear as a sign of political impotence, the “strings” demonstrate the opposite.



The full essay is at "Essays on the E.U. Political Economy," available at Amazon.




[1] Ian Talley, “World Bank Lowers Global Outlook,” The Wall Street Journal, January 14, 2015.