First came the financial and debt crisis in Greece, then government financing difficulties and rescue programs in Ireland in 2010 and Portugal in 2011. Before long, Italy and Spain were engulfed by financial contagion as well. Finally in 2012, the European Central Bank pledged to do “whatever it takes” to preserve the euro area with purchases of government bonds, a step that achieved impressive results, according to William R. Cline in this important new book.

One of the world’s leading experts on fiscal and debt issues, Cline mobilizes meticulously researched and forceful arguments to trace the history of the euro area debt crisis and makes projections of future debt sustainability. He argues that euro area leaders made the right decision to keep the euro from breaking apart but warns against complacency about the future. Cline contends that troubled European economies should continue their fiscal consolidation but that further debt restructurings for most countries are not called for. Greece is a special case and may need some further debt relief contingent on continued progress on fiscal and structural reform, however. In this landmark study, Cline offers a detailed analysis of the mistakes, successes, and options for Europe as it struggles to overcome its worst economic disaster since World War II.

Europe is suffering from a bipolar economic disorder; one symptom of which is a sovereign debt crisis. The media have divided the continent into two groups of nations: center and periphery, not by geography but by credit ratings on national debt. European Debt Crisis: The Sovereign Debt Crisis – A Memorandum from the Periphery is a critical investigation of the root causes of the crisis, and the often misguided policy choices made to ‘resolve’ it.

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz addresses how regional debt contagion in Europe compares with regional financial crises elsewhere, while former Argentine Minister for Economics Roberto Lavagna provides a poignant comparative analysis with his own country’s experience. Crucially and uniquely, Portuguese, Greek, and Irish economists provide hard-hitting case studies that offer the perspective of the European ‘periphery’.

A much-needed book offering a heterodox economic perspective on the causes, symptoms, and solutions of the biggest economic issue currently facing Europe.

Examining the causes of the acute Latin American debt crisis that began in mid-1982, North American analysts have typically focused on deficiencies in the debtor countries’ economic policies and on shocks from the world economy. Much less emphasis has been placed on the role of the region’s principal creditors–private banks–in the development of the crisis. Robert Devlin rounds out the story of Latin America’s debt problem by demonstrating that the banks were an endogenous source of instability in the region’s debt cycle, as they overexpanded on the upside and overcontracted on the downside.

Originally published in 1993.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Since 2008, economic policymakers and researchers have occupied a brave new economic world. Previous consensuses have been upended, former assumptions have been cast into doubt, and new approaches have yet to stand the test of time. Policymakers have been forced to improvise and researchers to rethink basic theory. George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate and one of this volume’s editors, compares the crisis to a cat stuck in a tree, afraid to move. In April 2013, the International Monetary Fund brought together leading economists and economic policymakers to discuss the slowly emerging contours of the macroeconomic future. This book offers their combined insights. The editors and contributors–who include the Nobel Laureate and bestselling author Joseph Stiglitz, Federal Reserve Vice Chair Janet Yellen, and the former Governor of the Bank of Israel Stanley Fischer–consider the lessons learned from the crisis and its aftermath. They discuss, among other things, post-crisis questions about the traditional policy focus on inflation; macroprudential tools (which focus on the stability of the entire financial system rather than of individual firms) and their effectiveness; fiscal stimulus, public debt, and fiscal consolidation; and exchange rate arrangements.

The financial crisis is destroying wealth but is also a remarkable opportunity to uncover the ways by which debt can be used to regulate the economic system. This book usesfour case studies of cooperatives to give an in-depth analysis on how they have braved the crisis and continued to generate wealth.

Our government debt is rising every day. Our population is shifting as more people retire and fewer are able to find work. Our social programs, including the Affordable Care Act, are only adding to our financial burden, and rising taxes are hindering economic growth. We are a nation in the red.

A powerful wake-up call to leaders, investors, and citizens, this brilliantly researched book reveals the surprising truth about our national debt–and what we can do about it.

You’ll learn: How reckless spending by Congress has created a debt trap How Obamacare will negatively affect health care costs and our economy How Social Security really works–and why it’s unsustainable in its current form How changing interest rates could spell disaster for the United States What America can learn from Europe’s economic woes What could happen if the United States defaults on its loans What our government needs to do now to save us from collapse What you can do to protect yourself and your family

Written in clear, concise language and backed with ample data and sometimes shocking facts, A Nation in the Red presents a reasoned, straightforward approach to one of the most controversial issues of our time. You’ll discover the fascinating psychological reasons that have helped create our debt trap, the staggering price of FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society, and the real cost of entitlement programs like Medicare, Social Security, and welfare. You’ll learn about the 2,200 federal programs that we’re all paying for–and the truth about Bush-era tax cuts versus Obama’s tax hikes. You’ll also discover how the five most obvious ways to reduce debt may–or may not–be the solution to our country’s problems.

And most importantly, you’ll learn how to protect your own wealth from the next financial crisis.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR A NATION IN THE RED

“A Nation in the Red is the best-researched and most understandable explanation of how the United States put itself in the untenable debt position it is in today. Murray Holland has an extraordinary comprehension of the economic, currency, legal, and business problems facing this country. He has the knowledge to understand the extent of our problems and the wisdom to advise how to get out of the government debt trap.” — Christopher Mahoney, retired Vice Chairman, Moody’s Investors Service

“A Nation in the Red is a must read to get a vivid picture of where our country is on the slippery slope to financial disaster and what must be done to reverse this fatal direction, creating a path to recovery and a promising future.” — Jeff Heller, retired President and Chief Operating Officer, Electronic Data Systems Corporation

“Murray Holland has an uncanny sense for business management, finance, and markets, both domestically and internationally. If he speaks, listen. There is nobody better than Murray Holland when it comes to prognosticating finance and business matters. His vision has consistently–in some cases unfortunately–been right.” — John Waller, Chairman, Waller Capital Corporation

“A Nation in the Red is a complete, sophisticated review of all the economic, business, and currency issues we are facing now that the United States has one of the worst debt problems in the world. Murray Holland accurately analyzes our very few options for how we can get out of the trap our government has put us in. Read it!” — Ray Washburne, Finance Chairman, Republican National Committee

In 2001, Greece saw its application for membership into the Eurozone accepted, and the country sat down to the greatest free lunch in economic history. However, the coming years of global economic prosperity would lead to unrestrained spending, cheap borrowing, and a failure to implement financial reform, leaving the country massively exposed to a financial crisis—which duly struck.

In Bust: Greece, the Euro, and the Sovereign Debt Crisis, Bloomberg columnist Matthew Lynn explores Greece’s spectacular rise and fall from grace and the global repercussions of its financial disaster. Page by page, he provides a thrilling account of the Greek financial crisis, drawing out its origins, how it escalated, and its implications for a fragile global economy. Along the way, Lynn looks at how the Greek contagion has spread like wildfire throughout Europe and explores how government ineptitude as well as financial speculators compounded the problem.

Blending financial history, politics, and current affairs, Lynn skillfully tells the story of how one nation rode the wave of economic prosperity and brought a continent, a currency, and, potentially, the global financial system to its knees. Lively, engaging, and thought provoking, Bust reminds us just how interconnected the world really is.

Q&A with Author Matthew Lynn
Author Matthew Lynn Bust looks at how the sovereign debt crisis started in Greece, but why did it start there?
Greece was one of the most profligate nations in the world. It has been virtually continually in default on its debts in one form or another ever since the modern Greek state was created in the nineteenth century. So it was always a fairly good candidate.

At the start of 2010, the markets were already getting worried about sovereign debt. It was essentially Act II of the credit crunch. Governments all around the world had fixed a private debt crisis by turning it into a public debt crisis: they ran up these huge deficits, both to bail out their banking systems and to boost their economies. But the public debts were never any more sustainable than the private debts.

Greece happened to be the easiest country to make an example of. But if it hadn’t been Greece, it would have been someone else.

This was really a crisis about the markets refusing to sanction unending government deficits – and that’s what the book explores.

But the book implies this is a story about the euro as well? Why is that?
It certainly is. The sovereign debt crisis blew apart the euro, and it is going to be very hard to put it back together. Europe’s single currency celebrated its first decade of existence in pretty good shape. The currency was stable, new members were joining, and it was gaining ground on the dollar as the world’s most important currency.

But then the Greeks came along and put a bomb underneath it.

Greece lied and cheated its way into the euro. It completely made up the figures that squeezed it into the euro, and, once it was inside, made no attempt to play by the rules. When confidence in the country collapsed, they expected the rest of Europe to bail them out. But what kind of club is it where you can cheat your way in, ignore the rules, then expect the other members to pick up your bar bills? Not one that anyone is going to want to belong to for long.

So this is not just a story about the sovereign debt crisis – it is a story about how the euro is falling apart, and how that will change the European Union as well.

What did you learn from writing the book?
The book was a real education for me. That was one of the reasons I wrote it. I wanted to learn more about how this fairly small country right on the edge of Europe which no one usually paid very much attention to was suddenly right at the epicentre of a major financial crisis.

It’s not the kind of story you can make sense of just by reading a few headlines. There were so many strands that had to be pulled together. The history of Greece, and why its economy was so underdeveloped. The design of the euro, and all the compromises that led up to its creation that proved to be crippling once the crisis struck. The changing nature of Germany, how it had overcome post-war guilt, and why it was refusing to bail-out the rest of Europe any more. The build-up of government debt right around the word. All of these big themes came together to produce this crisis, and that is what made it such a fascinating book to write.

What are the implications for the world economy of the themes you explore in the book?
Firstly, it’s the end of the euro, at least in its current form. It was a disaster to bail-out Greece, and, curiously enough, I think a lot of the people right at the very top of the policy-making debate knew that. It created a single currency with all the wrong incentives. It would have been far better to let Greece go bust and then to deal with the consequences of that than to try and patch up a broken system. But, in the end, and this process is detailed in the book, they shied away from that, and just threw money at the problem instead.

But it’s not going to work, and the euro is going to slowly unravel as a result. It might be three years, maybe five, maybe ten. But it going to happen, and it is going to be very messy.

But it is also the end of state profligacy, at least in the developed world. For about thirty years, governments have been consistently spending more than they raise in taxes. It’s a very easy option – spending money is a lot more popular than raising taxes. They did it by just continually adding to the debt.

In that respect, the politicians just reflected their electorates. Much the same thing happened in the private sector. In Europe and the U.S., ordinary people didn’t get much wealthier in the last thirty years, they just took on more and more debt.

But this crisis represents the end of that road. You can’t just keep on piling on more and more debt. As the title puts it, the system is bust. And the road is going to be much harder from now on.

A clear, authoritative guide to the crisis of 2008, its continuing repercussions, and the needed reforms ahead.

The U.S. economy lost the first decade of the twenty-first century to an ill-conceived boom and subsequent bust. It is in danger of losing another decade to the stagnation of an incomplete recovery. How did this happen? Read this lucid explanation of the origins and long-term effects of the recent financial crisis, drawn in historical and comparative perspective by two leading political economists.

By 2008 the United States had become the biggest international borrower in world history, with more than two-thirds of its $6 trillion federal debt in foreign hands. The proportion of foreign loans to the size of the economy put the United States in league with Mexico, Indonesia, and other third-world debtor nations. The massive inflow of foreign funds financed the booms in housing prices and consumer spending that fueled the economy until the collapse of late 2008. This was the most serious international economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Menzie Chinn and Jeffry Frieden explain the political and economic roots of this crisis as well as its long-term effects. They explore the political strategies behind the Bush administration’s policy of funding massive deficits with foreign borrowing. They show that the crisis was foreseen by many and was avoidable through appropriate policy measures. They examine the continuing impact of our huge debt on the continuing slow recovery from the recession. Lost Decades will long be regarded as the standard account of the crisis and its aftermath.