The European Central Bank as a Policy Entrepreneur within Banking Union

Introduction: The European Union, together with the euro zone, negotiated a set of new policies and institutions on banking union from 2012 onward to enhance financial stability and resilience within the European economy. These policies and institutions comprise the Single Supervisory Mechanism, the Single Resolution Mechanism, a European Deposit Insurance System, and a European public backstop mechanism. These individual items represent parts of a financial stability architecture that Europe needs to combat crises and prevent contagion before, during and after the onset of a crisis. Supervision focuses on crisis prevention through the application of prudential standards. Resolution and deposit insurance systems help to prevent a bank’s collapse from initiating contagion: inflicting fatal damage on other banks, or instigating panic. Finally, public backstops provide a lender of last resort function to the banking sector as a whole when all else fails

Rising like a rocket

What fuels one of MU's most successful graduates? A profile of investment guru Bill Thompson by staff writer Shawn Donnelly

German Politics and Intergovernmental Negotiations on the Eurozone Budget

This article examines selected political party positions on a Eurozone budget and fiscal transfers between 2018 and 2021. It posits that German government positions on common European debt and fiscal policy have undergone a significant but fragile shift. It must contend with continued domestic hostility before it can be said to be a lasting realignment. A great deal with depend less on the Social Democratic Party that is largely responsible for bringing it about with the support of German Greens, and more on the willingness of the Christian Democratic Union, their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union and the German voting public to adopt a more interventionist fiscal policy as well, generating shared commitments to economic policy at home and in Europe. That has not happened yet

Semiconductor and ICT Industrial Policy in the US and EU: Geopolitical Threat Responses

This article analyses chips and critical ICT infrastructure policy in the US and the EU. It examines the increasing impor-tance of Waltian geopolitical security threats on both sides of the Atlantic as a driver of industrial policy, export controls, self‐sufficiency, and friendshoring as a replacement for dependence on global supply chains. It shows that threat percep-tions are strong and bipartisan in the US, allowing comprehensive, strategic and well‐funded industrial policy. Threat per-ceptions driving chip and 5G industrial policy are also present in the EU’s Economic Security Strategy and related policies. However, differing national preferences dilute a Waltian turn with continued attachment to liberal (global supply chain) approaches to chips and 5G infrastructure and a Waltzian realist stance (capacity‐building to build, protect, and promote regardless of security threat) that occupies the middle ground.</p

Liberal economic nationalism, financial stability, and Commission leniency in Banking Union

This paper demonstrates that protection and promotion of insolvent banks remains a high priority for national authorities in Europe, and the Commission partially accommodates these impulses in the desire to preserve national financial stability. Insolvent banks are kept alive despite Banking Union rules on resolution designed to facilitate their closure at the cost of private investors. Italian and Portuguese cases demonstrate that pressure to relax state aid rules is strongest where problems are the greatest. However, the long-term trend is still an incremental decrease in national leeway to protect and promote national bank ownership

Clocks, Caps, Compartments, and Carve‐Outs: Creating Federal Fiscal Capacity Despite Strong Veto Powers

This article examines four mechanisms for establishing federal spending programmes despite tough opposition based on identity or ideological politics, as well as disputes between haves and have-nots. It contrasts the use of clocks (time limits), caps, compartments (special justification for spending that would otherwise have been rejected), and carve-outs (exemptions to federal spending programmes to buy off objecting veto players) to secure political support for national-level programmes, and asks under what conditions those limits might be breached. We look at the EU, Canada, and the US. These tactics are most successful at "getting to yes" for federal authorities when they can isolate individual objections. As long as those objections persist, the limits will persist as well