I’m on the Crimean Peninsula for a meeting of the European Resource Bank. It’s my first trip to Ukraine, and the conference is being held at a hotel on the Black Sea, so I can’t complain about the scenery.
But the news from the various European think tanks is generally not favorable.
Marcin Nowacki of Project Lodz in Poland spoke about how the government is confiscating most of the money that workers contribute to personal retirement accounts.
Pierre Garello of France’s Institute for Research in Economic and Fiscal Issue gave a less-than-hopeful analysis of regional developments.
And I was given a rather depressing analysis of Portugal from Orlando Samoes of the Instituto de Estudos Politicos.
Last but not least, from an American perspective, I added to the misery by looking at the fiscal mess in the developed world, but I’ll provide the gory details tomorrow.
