Getting to Normal

The de facto default by Greece early this year ended investors’ complacency. The government bonds of peripheral eurozone countries thus became toxic. Given the unprecedented nature of the Greek default, the market valuation of peripheral debt has been fluctuating widely, still searching for “fundamentals,” such as deficit or debt levels, that could explain the evolution of risk premia over time.

→ Project Syndicate

Learning From Past Crises: Into The Safety Zone

There are limitations to what we can learn from the past, if the world has changed or the Eurozone is special. The Eurozone is special because individual countries cannot count on the central bank acting as lender of last resort to the sovereign. This makes self-fulfilling crises possible, since high spreads (say because of an expectation of Eurozone breakup) make sovereign defaults more likely.

→ VoxEU