At the heart of Portugal’s budget deadlock are three policy goals: economic growth, a balanced budget, and more funding for the welfare state. The conflict between these three goals is not unique to the Costa budget, nor is it unique to Portugal. This is a Europe-wide volcano that happened to erupt in Portugal, and has led to an attention-grabbing political crisis. 

Angela Merkel did put in place a mechanism to strengthen German government finances. However, there was a price to be paid for this achievement, namely a slowly but steadily rising burden on German taxpayers.

Caught between Scylla and Charybdis, the choice for our central bankers is hard but simple: which short-term pain comes with the best prospects for prosperity in the future?

While the ideological divisions between Swedish political parties are centered around immigration, they reflect a deeper, more principled disagreement between the political mainstream and a resurgent conservative movement.