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14 May 2012updated 26 Sep 2015 7:01pm

Opinionomics | 14 May 2012

Must-read comment and analysis, featuring pasty-tax funded investment and much Eurocrisis.

By Alex Hern

1. As European Austerity Ends, So Could the Euro (Bloomberg View)

The euro currency is a malady that condemns at least a generation of Greeks, Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese and Irish to the economic infirmary, writes Peter Boone and Simon Johnson

2. The pasty tax could pay for a £30 billion infrastructure programme: four charts show why history will judge us harshly (Not the Treasury View)

Jonathan Portes writes that a £30bn infrastructure programme would cost just £150m a year, thanks to historically low gilt yields: that is the revenue raised by the pasty tax.

3. What history tells us about a potential Greek exit (Pragmatic Capitalism)

David Schawel asks what an exit from the euro would look like, and how it would be accomplished.

4. The recession deniers have gone strangely quiet this month (The Independent)

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We are in the slowest recovery for a century, with no end in sight, writes David Blanchflower

5. World edges closer to deflationary slump as money contracts in China (Telegraph)

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard argues that more and more signifiers point to depression hitting not just the developed world but the BRICS as well – and China could be the first to go.

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