Free Republic

Large parts of the eurozone are slipping deeper into a deflationary trap despite negative interest rates and one trillion euros of quantitative easing by the European Central Bank, leaving the currency bloc with no safety buffer when the next global recession hits. The ECB is close to exhausting its ammunition and appears increasingly powerless to do more under the legal constraints of its mandate. It has downgraded its growth forecast for the next two years, citing the uncertainties of Brexit, and admitted that it has little chance of meeting its 2pc inflation target this decade, insisting that it is now...

Among those who manage gobs of money, the possibility that Britain might actually disavow the European Union seemed until recently like a remote and even outlandish possibility. But about a week before voters go to the polls to determine their future, masters of finance are suddenly absorbing the prospect that Britain might really walk, unleashing anxiety and uncertainty throughout the global economy. Like local responders readying sandbags as a hurricane menaces their shores, financial industry overseers have been quietly drawing up contingency plans while surveying the expensive havoc a so-called Brexit is already wreaking. Central bankers from London to Washington...

GORDON Brown insists there is no such thing as a “window of opportunity” for joining the euro. He won’t risk a leap in the dark simply because a row of traffic lights happen to show green for a few minutes. Yet this is exactly what Tony Blair wants the Chancellor to do when he announces the results of his famous “five tests” on convergence next month. Mr Blair believes Britain’s political destiny lies in the single currency — whatever the economic risks. Mr Brown knows the euro is a one-way bet. Once in, there’s no way back. If it all...