Anti-austerity protestors take to the streets in central Athens earlier this year. Getty Images

Following the rejection of EU imposed austerity measures by the overwhelming majority of Greek voters, eurozone finance ministers have once again come to Brussels to try and save the single currency in what is being described as a ‘crucial 48 hours’.

Two thirds of the Greek electorate voted for parties opposed to the austerity measures required by the European Commission, ECB and IMF as a precondition of a further bailout; despite the outgoing government pledging to adhere to these measures.

Without compromise either by the Greeks accepting austerity measures or the EU offering concessions on the proposed package, another election is inevitable. In this case the bailout package will be suspended, Greece will default on its debt and an exit from the eurozone may follow. None of this will offer much respite for the struggling Greek economy.

In the past the EU offered concessions to voters having rejected EU treaties, however this time there is little political will, and not only in Germany, to offer sweeteners to the Greeks to help them swallow the bitter pill of fiscal adjustment.

Why then are the Greeks fighting against the support from the EU? And should the rest of the EU let them resist or should they be offered a sweeter deal after all?

Higher education can – and should – be a dynamo to economies. In the UK the HE ‘business’ is estimated to be worth around £59bn and employs more than 1% of the entire workforce, contributing more to GDP than the pharmaceutical and advertising industries combined. But so far its only been rankings of the top institutions which get attention – much less for how national systems of HE are doing, the environment and support they provide to fuel this potential mechanism for growth.

The US recovery has stalled, the UK has fallen back into recession and most of Europe is mired in a debt quagmire to which there appears to be no quick exit. It is against this background that Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, has come out aggressively in favor of additional Fed actions.

Christine Lagarde, IMF managing director

On the face of it, the recently agreed expansion of the IMF’s lending capacity suggests that the IMF is back in business. Since the global economic crisis began no UN or other global public agency has had their resources expanded by governments as much as the IMF. The IMF has also been at the centre of several crisis-era surveillance and reporting initiatives. So is the IMF now even better placed to better contribute to the recovery of the global economy? Maybe not.

The world economy is showing scattered signs of vigor but remains on life support, mostly provided by accommodative central banks. Concerns about spillover from a worsening of the European debt crisis and slowing growth in key emerging markets are putting a damper on consumer and business confidence. Equity markets are pulling back from a robust performance in the first quarter of this year as the sobering reality of a continued anemic recovery weakens investors’ optimism.

There are some positive signs in the latest update of the Brookings Institution-FT Tracking Indices for the Global Economic Recovery (TIGER), but also much to worry about as the world economy continues to meander with no clear sense of direction.

Long-term investment in infrastructure needs a better policy mix

George Osborne’s attempts to encourage British pension funds to invest more in infrastructure projects are to be applauded. Canadian and Australian pension funds have already invested heavily in infrastructure, but UK funds are still reluctant investors. Why?

British prime minister David Cameron tours Newton Heath rail depot. Getty images

Pension fund trustees have a fiduciary duty to get the best return for scheme members after taking due account of risk.  Government cannot and should not dictate how or where and how these funds invest their assets. If government wants pension funds to engage with the long term needs of the UK economy, it must first understand the particular pressures they face as investors.

John Kay’s interim report finds that equity markets are failing in their primary tasks, which he identifies as enhancing the long-term growth of listed companies and providing savers with an appropriately high, risk-adjusted return on their investments. The failure lies, he suggests, in the way that market actors are currently incentivised.  If asset managers are assessed on a quarterly or biannual basis, it is not surprising that they apply benchmarks based on the short-run performance of the firms they invest in.

Corporate managers, on the other hand, believe that they have a legal duty to maximise short-term shareholder value, and act accordingly.  Kay rightly suggests that this view is mistaken as a matter of law but, again, it is no surprise that directors and managers think in these terms, given the way that shareholders are routinely described as the ‘owners’ of the firms they invest in. Disclosure rules add to the problem, in particular those requiring quarterly reporting of corporate results. Lawyers will recognise that shareholders are the owners of their shares, not the company, and that they have no right to manage the firm, having delegated this power to the board, but these subtleties are clearly being lost in translation.

In Germany this week Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff rebuked industrialised countries for creating a “liquidity tsunami” of speculative capital that is bubbling currencies, stock and bond markets across emerging markets and the developing world.  To stem the tide, her government extended a tax on speculative inflows of capital into Brazil.

A new task force report entitled Regulating Global Capital Flows for Long-Run Development, released this week, argues that regulating flows to tame the liquidity wave are justified more than ever in the wake of the global financial crisis.  Countries have more flexibility to deploy such measures given the new consensus in the peer-reviewed academic literature and at the IMF that capital account regulations have been effective tools to prevent and mitigate financial crises.  In this new environment Brazil, Indonesia, Taiwan, Peru, Thailand, South Korea, and many others have regulated flows.

Brazil's president Dilma Rousseff

However, the report also expresses serious concern that many countries lack the ability to regulate flows because many of the world’s economic integration clubs and trade and investment treaties have started to mandate capital account liberalisation.

Today, from Greece to Iceland, governments are acting as enforcers or even as collection agents on behalf of the financial sector — and Iceland stands as a dress rehearsal for this power grab.

The problem of bank loans gone bad has thrown into question just what should be a “fair value” for these debt obligations. The answer will depend largely on the degree to which governments back the claims of creditors. The legal definition of how much can be squeezed out is becoming a political issue pulling national governments, the IMF, ECB and financial agencies into a conflict, pitting banks, vulture funds and debt-strapped populations against each other.

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. AFP/Getty Images

Emerging markets have fallen victim to unstable capital flows in the wake of the financial crisis. In an attempt to mitigate the accompanying asset bubbles and exchange rate pressures that come with such volatility, a number of emerging markets resorted to capital controls. Although these actions have largely been supported by the International Monetary Fund, some policy-makers and economists have decried capital controls as protectionist measures that can cause spillovers that unduly harm other nations.

Recently-published research shows that these claims are unfounded. According to the new welfare economics of capital controls, unstable capital flows to emerging markets can be viewed as negative externalities on recipient countries. Therefore regulations on cross-border capital flows are tools to correct for market failures that can make markets work better and enhance growth, not worsen it.