Grilled Cheese

ExploreLog inSign up
Terms of UsePrivacy PolicyCommunity StandardsHelpGet the app

Grilled Cheese is a product of Village Compute

Version devBuilt at: 2026-10-11 19:07:23 EDT

Explore

PostsPeople
LatestRanked
@cepr.orgOct 1, 2026, 8:59 AM

Ignazio Visco writes for #Europe2050 to argue that Europe lacks the institutions to turn private wealth into productive investment. He proposes a permanent European safe asset built by transferring the portion of national debt into a common European debt-management vehicle.
cepr.org/publications...

Europe is not short of savings, its households hold one of the world's largest stocks of private financial wealth, but Ignazio Visco (former Governor, Bank of Italy) argues in this contribution to CEPR's Europe 2050 series that it lacks the institutions to turn that wealth into productive investment. Too much of it sits in deposits and low-risk domestic assets while innovative, technology-intensive firms struggle to find late-stage financing and increasingly turn to foreign investors instead. Visco's central proposal is a permanent European safe asset, built by transferring the portion of national debt exceeding the Maastricht threshold of 60% of GDP, more than €4 trillion in total, into a common European debt-management vehicle that continuously refinances it through highly liquid securities. Crucially, this is not debt mutualisation: a "tax lock" mechanism would keep each member state responsible for servicing its own share through dedicated revenue streams, addressing fears about moral hazard that have stalled previous proposals such as Blue Bonds or Blanchard and Ubide's fixed-share Eurobond scheme. He argues that political resistance to financial integration is often self-defeating, since the countries most concerned about fiscal discipline are precisely those with the strongest interest in a credible, well-designed common safe asset. Drawing a direct parallel with the Cecchini Report, which built momentum for the 1992 Single Market by quantifying the "cost of non-Europe", Visco calls for a similar exercise for finance, then sets out a three-stage sequence: first removing barriers through convergence in insolvency and tax procedures, then deepening the Savings and Investment Union via the proposed 28th regime, and only then introducing the safe asset as culmination rather than starting point. His closing argument is what he calls the sovereignty paradox: in a world of continental-scale capital markets, pooling financial capacity may be what allows member sta...
@cepr.orgSep 30, 2026, 11:50 AM

@baldwinre.bsky.social writes for #Europe2050 contending Europe should not try to restore the old, American-led trading order, but instead become the strongest centre of gravity in the new one by playing to its strengths of economic mass, rule-based order & predictability.
cepr.org/publications...

Twenty-five years from now, Richard Baldwin (IMD Business School) argues, the world trade system will not have collapsed but been rebuilt, into three blocs, Europe, the US and China, none strong enough to dominate the others. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series as a "future history" looking back from 2050, he contends Europe should not try to restore the old, American-led order but instead become the strongest centre of gravity in the new one, using what he calls trade clout: economic mass multiplied by rule quality multiplied by predictability, all three levers within Europe's own control. He credits Europe's advantage partly to social cohesion, arguing a "muscular social policy" that keeps both winners and losers from economic change invested in the project gives Europe a stability the US bloc lacks, where populist swings remain a structural feature rather than a passing phase. Reviewing the EU's actual conduct since the tariff shock of April 2025, accepting an asymmetric deal with Washington rather than retaliating, building deterrent "bunkers" like the Anti-Coercion Instrument without firing them, and striking a rapid run of trade deals with India, Mercosur and Mexico, he reads this as disciplined strategy rather than weakness, given Europe's continued security dependence on the US. He traces the wider pattern to what he calls domino regionalism, in which countries outside the US-China conflict organise themselves into a "system of solar systems" with the EU as its largest sun, and sets out ten steps to reinforce this: completing the single market, enlarging to Ukraine and the Western Balkans, pursuing interoperability rather than merger with the CPTPP, and organising a "leadership herd" to negotiate a transparency and disciplines compact on Chinese industrial subsidies. His closing argument is that none of this is fully achievable without the last item on his list: an independently defended Europe, since trade policy can never be entirely autonomous while ...
@cepr.orgSep 28, 2026, 9:41 AM

The private sector has been slow to build in front-end interfaces that would let Europeans use the TIPS system. @agnesbq.bsky.social argues that the forthcoming digital euro will break the deadlock, neutralising the network effects entrenching Visa and Mastercard.
#Europe2050

In August 2025, two European judges on the International Criminal Court lost access to Paypal, Visa and Mastercard after being sanctioned by the US administration over arrest warrants for Israeli officials. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré (Banque de France) treats this as the wake-up call it should have been: as of 2026, thirteen of the euro area's 21 member countries remain entirely reliant on non-EU networks for card payments, and even the domestic schemes that do exist are not interoperable across borders. This is despite the euro area having had a sovereign instant payment system, TIPS, since 2018, now extended to Sweden and Denmark; the problem, she argues, has been a private sector too slow to build the front-end interfaces that would let citizens actually use it at the till or online. Her central case is that the forthcoming digital euro, expected around 2029, can break this deadlock precisely because it will be legal tender: merchants will have to accept it, neutralising the network effects that entrench Visa and Mastercard, while a "waterfall" mechanism keeps wallets useable for payments without turning them into a competing store of value that drains bank deposits or the data banks rely on. She then extends the argument to wholesale finance, where a second wake-up call is looming: if tokenised securities end up settling in privately issued stablecoins rather than central bank money, the ECB could lose its role as lender of last resort over wholesale transactions, with financial stability and seigniorage both at risk. Her account of the Eurosystem's response, the Pontes and Appia projects, an expanding TIPS network reaching India and Switzerland, and participation in the BIS's Agorà initiative, reads less as a wish list than a project tracker: the infrastructure exists or is being built, and the outstanding question is less technical than one of urgency and adoption.
@cepr.orgSep 25, 2026, 12:09 PM

@lucafornaro.bsky.social writes for CEPR's #Europe2050 and argues that Europe's transformation into an innovation leader depends less on structural reform alone than on getting the macroeconomic mix right. Robust productivity and strong demand can be mutually reinforcing.
ow.ly/PqH850ZQZF9

The European Union faces a choice: keep competing in low-tech sectors by compressing wages, or become a genuine technological leader through innovation. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Luca Fornaro argues that this transformation depends less on structural reform alone than on getting the macroeconomic mix right. His starting point is the "European stagnation trap" of the 2010s, when fiscal austerity and a monetary policy constrained by the zero lower bound produced a decade of weak demand and depressed investment, business investment took ten years just to recover its pre-2008 peak, and the productivity gap with the United States widened as a result. Fornaro's central argument is that robust productivity growth and strong demand can be mutually reinforcing rather than in tension: faster productivity growth is disinflationary, which gives central banks room to support demand without stoking inflation, which in turn encourages the business investment that drives further productivity gains. He argues this "virtuous cycle" means the composition of any economic expansion matters as much as its scale, with booms driven by high-tech, tradable sectors proving far more sustainable than those driven by construction or credit expansion in non-tradables. On fiscal policy, he points to evidence that public R&D investment can be self-financing, given estimated returns of 140 to 210%, and argues that high-debt countries in particular stand to benefit from redirecting spending towards such high-return public goods rather than treating debt as a reason to retrench. His final concern is that public debt overhangs risk splitting the EU into a fiscally sound bloc that invests and grows, and a fiscally stagnant one that cannot, with capital flowing from the latter to the former and widening the divide; joint EU-level financing of public goods, he argues, is one way to guard against this two-speed outcome.
@cepr.orgSep 23, 2026, 11:33 AM

Abebe Aemro Selassie argues that Europe is cutting aid, narrowing legal migration channels, & overlooking Africa for investment precisely when demographics argue for closer ties. Europe's disengagement is a choice, and Africa can look elsewhere for partners.
cepr.org/publications...
#Europe2050

By 2050, one in four people on earth will be African, and the continent will account for nearly 80% of the net increase in the world's working-age population between now and mid-century. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Abebe Aemro Selassie (Blavatnik School of Government) argues that Europe is walking away from the partner best placed to help it navigate this shift, cutting aid, narrowing legal migration channels and overlooking Africa for investment, at precisely the moment the demographic arithmetic argues for closer ties. The numbers are stark: the EU's working-age population will shrink from around 285 million to 230 million over the next 25 years, while Africa's grows by more than 700 million, a "demographic scissors" that leaves one continent short of workers and the other short of jobs for them. Selassie is careful not to oversell migration as a fix on its own, he estimates Europe would need some 150 million additional workers just to preserve its current ratio of active workers to retirees, and argues legal pathways could plausibly cover only 10-15% of that shortfall, but he insists Europe should build predictable channels now, before ageing rivals from Canada to the Gulf states intensify competition for the same mobile labour. He identifies climate finance as a second natural area for partnership: renewable energy projects in Africa cost two to three times more to finance than identical projects in Europe, purely because of currency and sovereign risk, a gap EU-backed guarantees and local-currency lending could narrow substantially. Finally, he argues Europe and Africa share an interest in defending a rules-based trading order against being squeezed as price-takers between Chinese manufacturing dominance and American financial and technological power, and should negotiate jointly rather than separately, including calibrating instruments like the EU's carbon border mechanism to reflect African im...
@cepr.orgSep 23, 2026, 9:27 AM

In their contribution to CEPR's #Europe2050 initiative, Marco Buti, Ivo Maes, & André Sapir argue that the EU's incremental, technocratic fixes have run their course and only explicit, citizen backed institutional reform can equip the EU to act.
ow.ly/33sq50ZQ6y7

@stefwalter.bsky.socialSep 21, 2026, 2:19 PM

5/5 For Europe to thrive in 2050, a credible, positive case for Europe is needed.

For more on #Europe2050: cepr.org/europe-2050-...

@stefwalter.bsky.socialSep 21, 2026, 2:15 PM

2/3 We argue that Europe should prioritize reforms with high payoffs and lower political barriers. Where gains are small and opposition strong, leaving policy at the national level can make sense.

#Europe2050

@cepr.orgSep 21, 2026, 12:30 PM

Europe has spent a quarter of a century building a financial architecture it has never agreed to finish. Florian Heider, Loriana Pelizzon, & Claudia Schaffranka set out 10 specific decisions that could keep a genuinely convergent Europe reachable within 15 years.
ow.ly/mIZ350ZPBUS
#Europe2050

Europe has spent a quarter of a century building a financial architecture it has never agreed to finish. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Florian Heider, Loriana Pelizzon and Claudia Schaffranka (all SAFE, Goethe University Frankfurt) argue that the usual framing of the choice ahead, completion versus collapse, is a false binary. The likelier outcome, they contend, is a third state they call mediocrity: an architecture in which every institution formally exists, every directive has been transposed, and none of it binds. Twenty-seven insolvency regimes, no common safe asset, and a Banking Union missing its deposit insurance pillar leave capital and liquidity trapped inside national borders, even as European households export around €300 billion a year into more liquid American markets. Mediocrity has genuine beneficiaries, from national supervisors to domestic banks with captive deposit bases, which is precisely why it persists: each element of completion imposes concentrated, immediate costs on organised incumbents while its benefits are diffuse and go to firms and savers who do not yet exist. But the authors insist mediocrity is not a stable resting point. It is a state built for calm conditions that decays into fragmentation under stress, and the conditions that made it survivable for twenty-five years are ending: tokenisation, stablecoins and AI are standard-setting contests that Europe cannot win by abstaining, and a fragmented Europe's fallback is not national self-sufficiency but deeper dependence on American capital markets and dollar-denominated digital money. They set out ten specific, largely already-drafted decisions, from a permanent EU safe asset to completing deposit insurance, that could keep a genuinely convergent Europe reachable within fifteen years, arguing that this is a hard ask but a precise one: not what Europe should aspire to, but which of ten known files it is prepared to conclude.
@cepr.orgSep 14, 2026, 1:15 PM

L Bini Smaghi & M Marcussen argue Europe's policy debate has focused overwhelmingly on the goal while paying far less attention to how it will be financed. They propose systematic ex ante financeability assessment and apply the lens to the EU's proposed budget.
cepr.org/publications...
#Europe2050

Europe's strategic agenda, closing the innovation gap, decarbonising competitively, and reducing security dependencies, comes with a price tag of at least 4.5% of GDP annually into the 2030s, rising to over €1.2tn a year once full defence spending is included. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi (Euro50 Group, UCL) and Michala Marcussen (Société Générale) argue that Europe's policy debate has focused overwhelmingly on defining this destination while paying far less attention to how it will actually be financed. Their central proposal is a systematic ex ante financeability assessment, evaluating not just funding volume but whether financing can generate genuine risk-bearing capacity without creating new strategic dependencies, built around five dimensions: economic rationale, risk management, loss absorption, scalability and strategic autonomy. Applying this lens, they find the EU's own budgetary firepower falls well short, with the proposed 2028-2034 budget likely covering only 10-30% of investment needs, and identify a series of blind spots in the current debate: the underappreciated role of public investment in unlocking private capital, the risk that scarce EU funding pushes innovative firms to seek capital abroad and lose European ownership in the process, and the mistaken assumption that European households save cautiously out of risk aversion when the binding constraint is more often liquidity, given how much wealth is tied up in illiquid, leveraged housing. They are equally sceptical that private capital markets alone can close the gap, noting that America's own risk-sharing capacity rests heavily on public and quasi-public backstops that Europe's securitisation and safe asset debates have largely overlooked. Their conclusion is that unlocking investment demand and building financial risk-bearing capacity are equally urgent tasks, and that neither will happen by default.
@cepr.orgSep 11, 2026, 11:22 AM

Emmanuelle Auriol argues that economic immigration to Europe must become a normal instrument of policy rather than an exception. To achieve this, she proposes a three-track compact that lets national sovereignty coexist with a genuinely European labour market. #Europe2050 #EconSky
ow.ly/Gqu150ZMvmI

Europe's debate on immigration is usually organised around emergencies: a border arrival, an asylum dispute, a shortage in one occupation. Writing for CEPR's Europe 2050 series, Emmanuelle Auriol (Toulouse School of Economics) argues that this short-term framing obscures the question that actually matters by 2050: whether Europe will have enough workers, carers, engineers and taxpayers to sustain its prosperity and strategic autonomy. With the EU's old-age dependency ratio set to approach 50% by mid-century, she argues that economic immigration must become a normal instrument of policy rather than an exception, though not through open borders: the goal should be managed openness, with predictable volumes, enforceable rights and real sanctions against abuse. Auriol proposes a three-track compact: a genuine European Talent and Graduate Route built around the new EU Talent Pool, with an automatic three-year graduate permit so international students are not lost just as their economic contribution begins; dynamic national shortage lists covering essential work at all skill levels, not only exceptional talent, backed by portable short-term and circular permits that let workers change employer within their sector; and a sustained attack on irregular employment itself, following Japan and Finland in verifying work authorisation and sanctioning employers rather than relying on border enforcement alone. Legal channels and enforcement, she argues, must be introduced together: offered separately, each backfires. Member states would keep control over admission volumes, while the EU supplies the shared infrastructure, from skills recognition to recruitment fee rules, that lets national sovereignty coexist with a genuinely European labour market.