Every rich democracy has a locked room filled with beautiful promises. Pensions will be there. Health coverage will hold. Retirement will feel earned, not improvised. Old age will not become …
The tax bill rarely arrives like thunder. It arrives like a polite envelope, a payroll deduction, a property assessment, a sales receipt, a fuel charge, a school levy, a fee …
A true spending review does not feel like strategy at first. It feels like a bright light switched on in a room where everyone had learned to live with the …
Few fiscal rituals are as theatrical and as economically absurd as the debt ceiling. It arrives with the mood of a final showdown, stern speeches, countdown graphics, market nerves, patriotic …
Modern tax systems are haunted by movement. Capital moves. Profits move. Firms move paper faster than goods. Wealth changes costume. Labor becomes more mobile in some places and more informal …
Oil has a way of humiliating budget plans. It turns elegant forecasts into damp paper and makes confident ministers sound like men reading vows during an earthquake. One month the …
Fiscal rules are the kind of institution people praise in peacetime and resent in storms. They sound tidy on paper, debt anchors, deficit ceilings, expenditure paths, escape clauses. They promise …
Some fiscal deceptions wear tuxedos. They do not smash windows or shout lies into microphones. They glide into public finance with elegant labels, special vehicles, extraordinary facilities, tax expenditures, guarantees, …
The old peace dividend now feels like a relic from a museum gift shop, tasteful, optimistic, and no longer priced for the world outside. Across many countries, defense has moved …
At first the change looks gentle. A little more silver hair on trains. A few longer queues at clinics. Pension debates pushed one notch higher on the evening agenda. Then …