Direct democracy as a way to limit public spending: Evidence from Switzerland

According to recent exit polls, Sweden may have just voted in some of the toughest executive pay rules in the entire world.

Lucas Papademos, the ex-technocrat prime minister of Greece says public finances face collapse. Greece’s public finances could collapse as early as next month, leaving salaries and pensions unpaid unless a stable government emerges from the June 17 election, according to Lucas Papademos, the technocrat prime minister who left office after this month’s inconclusive vote.

Reader E.R. pointed me to a helpful Joe Matthews op-ed in the Sacramento Bee that attempts to explain why direct democracy works better in Switzerland than in California:

The Financial Times reports Greek right a hostage to its own failures. On June 17, Stathis Potamitis, managing partner at an Athens law firm, plans to break a promise he has kept since his participation in a 1970s clandestine student group that opposed Greece’s military dictatorship. He will vote for the right.

Article written by Prieur du Plessis, editor of the Investment Postcards from Cape Town blog.The paragraphs below come courtesy of Mark Mobius, Chairman of the Templeton Emerging Markets Group.Myanmar, once known as Burma, has democracy standing on its doorstep.

Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, Maurice Obstfeld, 1 February 2012What explains the different effects of the crisis around the world? This column compares the 2007–09 crisis to earlier episodes of banking, currency, and sovereign debt distress and identifies domestic-credit booms and real currency appreciation as the most significant predictors of future crises, in both advanced and emerging economies.

Should presidents of regional Federal Reserve Banks have a vote on the FOMC, the policy-making committee of the Federal Reserve? Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) thinks they should not: