There was a time not so long ago when the vast majority of experts agreed that a country could not emerge decisively from a financial crisis unless it solved problems of both “stocks” and “flows” -- that is, secured a flow of money to cover its immediate needs and found a way to manage its stock of outstanding debt over time. In Europe today, this conventional wisdom appears to be fading. The temptation there is to declare victory having solved only the flow, not the stock, challenge. The flow/stock intuition is quite straightforward. In the first instance, a crisis-ridden country must generate enough resources to ... (full story)