Barry Eichengreen
Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His most recent book is Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar.
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2012-01-11
| While 2011 was supposed to be the year when European leaders finally got a grip on events, the eurozone’s problems went from bad to worse. The problem is not just that Europe faces a sovereign-debt crisis, but also that it faces a growth crisis, which worsens the debt problem.... read |
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2011-12-09
| The coming year will not be one of crisis, but nor will it bring an end to our current economic troubles. Rather, for Europe, the US, and China, 2012 will be a year of muddling through.... read |
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2011-11-08
| It may be hard to imagine that Europe’s crisis could worsen, but it just has. The Greek crisis will not go away until there is reason to hope that Greece can revive economic growth, while Italy and Portugal are heading into the same trap.... read |
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2011-10-11
| After a year and half of delay and denial, Greece is about to restructure its debt. But this by itself will not be enough to draw a line under the eurozone’s existential crisis, for which so-called "contingent convertible bonds," or "cocos," might be the answer.... read |
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2011-09-09
| If Europe is to avert the worst – a meltdown of the eurozone, if not of the EU itself – it is critical that European leaders distinguish what must be done now from what can be left for later. Indeed, unless they complete three urgent tasks, there will be no reason to discuss long-term reforms.... read |
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2011-08-11
| Already before the recent US debt-ceiling imbroglio, the dollar had begun losing its luster as a global reserve currency. But, with the euro facing serious problems of its own, what can replace the greenback?... read |
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2011-07-13
| So far, the EU's Greek strategy has amounted to squeezing blood from a stone. Instead, Europeans might usefully look back 60 years, to a time when their own countries, perched on the brink of a similar collapse, received the help that they needed to recover – help that has put them in a position to do something similar for Greece today.... read |
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2011-06-09
| Many complain that the Fed's near-zero interest-rate policy is debasing the dollar and eroding the currency’s purchasing power. But, if there is a threat to the dollar, it stems not from monetary policy, but from the fiscal side.... read |
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2011-05-10
| Financial markets are increasingly certain that a Greek debt restructuring is coming. Fortunately, there is a way to avoid the worst: emulate the Brady Plan, under which commercial banks, together with official creditors, restructured and took haircuts on the debt of Latin American and Eastern European governments in the 1980’s.... read |
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The Bear of Bretton Woods
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Barry Eichengreen 
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In early April, leading thinkers and former policymakers met in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, the birthplace in 1944 of the IMF and our dollar-centered international monetary system. This time around, it had already become clear that dollar will have to make way for the euro and renminbi.... read
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2011-03-09
| With the world’s rich countries still hungover from the financial crisis, the global economy has come to depend on emerging markets to drive growth. But Chinese officials warn that their economy is poised to slow – and this time they are right.... read |
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2010-01-22
| The great strength of Barack Obama's economic policies - in health care, fiscal stimulus, and stabilizing the banking system - has been not to allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. But, with the time for crisis management coming to a close, he now needs to aim higher if he is to fulfill his promise of a more economically just society.... read |
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2011-11-08
| It may be hard to imagine that Europe’s crisis could worsen, but it just has. The Greek crisis will not go away until there is reason to hope that Greece can revive economic growth, while Italy and Portugal are heading into the same trap.... read |
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2009-08-21
| The IMF has been one of the few beneficiaries of the global economic crisis. But the crisis will not last forever, and the IMF’s critics have not gone away, so the Fund must define its role now, while it still has the world's sympathetic ear.... read |
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2010-11-09
| In the US, the scent of decline is in the air, as imperial overreach, political polarization, and a costly financial crisis weigh on the economy. Indeed, some now worry that the US, doomed to slow growth, will, like the exhausted Britain that emerged from World War II, be forced to curtail its international commitments.... read |
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2011-02-08
| The revolts in Tunisia and Egypt, and protests elsewhere in the Arab world, largely reflect the fact that the benefits of growth have failed to trickle down to disaffected youth. China, with its armies of unemployed university graduates and poorly treated migrant workers, should take note.... read |
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2009-04-27
| Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China, made a splash prior to the recent G-20 summit by arguing that the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights should replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. But, for the SDR to become a true international currency, the IMF would have to become more like a global central bank and international lender of last resort.... read |
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2010-02-15
| The Greek crisis shows that the EU is still only halfway toward creating a viable monetary union. Unless it creates a proper emergency financing mechanism – and pushes for political integration required to make such a mechanism feasible – the next crisis will make this one look like a walk in the park.... read |
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2011-12-09
| The coming year will not be one of crisis, but nor will it bring an end to our current economic troubles. Rather, for Europe, the US, and China, 2012 will be a year of muddling through.... read |
2011-07-13
