Can central banks contain inflation? We once thought they could. Over the past 20 years, central banks around the world, including the United States Federal Reserve, pursued price stability with remarkable success.
When is it legitimate to lie? Can lying ever be virtuous? In the Machiavellian tradition, lying is sometimes justified by reference to the higher needs of political statecraft, and sometimes by the claim that the state, as an embodiment of the public good, represents a higher level of morality.
The European Union's sovereign-debt crisis constitutes a fundamental threat not only to the euro, but also to democracy and public accountability.
Crises are a chance to learn. For the past 200 years, with the exception of the Great Depression, major financial crises originated in poor and unstable countries, which then needed major policy adjustments.
The Japanese intervention was immediately controversial. American politicians denounced it as predatory; Europeans saw it as a step on the road to competitive devaluations.
The news that China has overtaken Japan as the world's second largest economy did not come as a surprise. This is the major geo-political outcome of the Great Recession of the early twenty-first century - one that carries both economic hope and political fear.
The financial crisis is over, but the age of general economic slowdown is only just beginning.
The choice for European central banking is now open: should it play around with multiple political partners, or should it settle down to stable marital bliss with a well-defined mechanism for responsibility and accountability?
President Barack Obama pressed European leaders to act to rescue the euro. The US economy would be highly vulnerable in the case of a euro collapse, so today's lame ducks need to embrace each other.
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