Matthew Lynn (born 1962) is a British financial journalist, author and publisher. He writes for The Daily Telegraph , The Spectator and MoneyWeek , and has worked as a columnist for The Sunday Times and Bloomberg. [1] He is also a thriller writer and author of the Death Force series of novels, having written under the name James Harland.
Lynn was born in 1962 and grew up in Exeter and Dublin, before moving to London. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford.
Lynn writes on business and economics, including columns in Bloomberg News , MoneyWeek and The Spectator . [2] [3] [4] For most of the 1990s, he worked for The Sunday Times , for the last three years as a profile columnist. [2]
His book Four Walls Eight Windows (ECON, 1997) was reviewed by Library Journal , which wrote, "Lynn's treatment of the political, industrial, and social turmoil surrounding the sale to major carriers of a stable of aircraft of various payloads and ranges has all the intrigue and skullduggery of a spy novel". [5]
Lynn wrote two business books, The Billion-Dollar Battle: Merck v. Glaxo [6] and Birds of Prey: Boeing v. Airbus. [7] The latter received a review from Publishers Weekly , [8] while Kirkus Reviews noted Lynn "writes serviceable prose at best". [7]
In a 2007 Bloomberg article, Matt Lynn predicted that Apple Inc. "…will sell a few to its fans, but the iPhone won't make a long-term mark on the industry". [9]
He is the author of Bust: Greece, the Euro and the Sovereign Debt Crisis, published in late 2010, [10] [11] [12] and more recently, The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031 (Endeavour Press). [13] His articles and opinions have been used as references by other authors and researchers. [14] [15] [16] [17] Bust was reviewed in CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries as follows: "books on economics and international finance rarely provide an exciting, gripping read". [18]
In 2012, Lynn was chief executive of Strategy Economics, a London-based consultancy. [13] His "London Eye" column began appearing weekly in MarketWatch in June 2011. [19]
As James Harland, he published The Month of the Leopard in 2001. Kirkus Reviews wrote, "Tension, pitifully lacking in the first two thirds of this grand adventure for MBAs, finally arrives, but nonbankers will probably have bailed out by then". [20] Publishers Weekly noted, "There are problems: flat characterizations, gratuitous violence, unconvincing motivation for Telmont and a too-hasty denouement. But the book is a page-turner for anyone interested in high-stakes financial shenanigans". [21]
He started writing the Death Force series of action-adventure thrillers in 2009. Featuring a group of mercenaries, the series includes Death Force, Fire Force and Shadow Force. The News of the World gave the first book a four-starred rating, describing it as "a Boy's-Own adventure guaranteed to get the pulse racing. It is up there with the finest that Andy McNab or Chris Ryan have ever penned". [22]
In 2018, Lynn set up Endeavour Media, an independent publisher based in London. [23] It became Lume Books in 2020. [24]
When trying to promote his book The Watchmen, Lynn offered the first chapter for free on the website Motley Fool UK. However users on the website objected to his unusual method of publicity and Lynn had to back off. [25]
He has three children. [26]
The euro is the official currency of 20 of the 27 member states of the European Union. This group of states is officially known as the euro area or, more commonly, the eurozone. The euro is divided into 100 euro cents.
The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central component of the Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) as well as one of seven institutions of the European Union. It is one of the world's most important central banks with a balance sheet total of around 7 trillion.
The economy of Greece is the 52nd largest in the world, with a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of $252.732 billion per annum. In terms of purchasing power parity, Greece is the world's 54th largest economy, at $436.757 billion per annum. As of 2023, Greece is the sixteenth largest economy in the European Union and eleventh largest in the eurozone. According to the International Monetary Fund's figures for 2024, Greece's GDP per capita is $24,342 at nominal value and $42,066 at purchasing power parity. Among OECD nations, Greece has a highly efficient and strong social security system; social expenditure stood at roughly 24.1% of GDP.
Ricardo A. M. R. Reis is a Portuguese economist who is currently the A. W. Phillips Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He works in macroeconomics, finance, and international economics and won the 2021 Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation medal awarded every two years by the European Economic Association for best economist under the age of 45. He writes a weekly op-ed for the Portuguese newspaper Expresso.
A currency crisis is a type of financial crisis, and is often associated with a real economic crisis. A currency crisis raises the probability of a banking crisis or a default crisis. During a currency crisis the value of foreign denominated debt will rise drastically relative to the declining value of the home currency. Generally doubt exists as to whether a country's central bank has sufficient foreign exchange reserves to maintain the country's fixed exchange rate, if it has any.
The president of the European Central Bank is the head of the European Central Bank (ECB), the main institution responsible for the management of the euro and monetary policy in the Eurozone of the European Union (EU)
Brad W. Setser is an American economist. He is a former staff economist at the United States Department of the Treasury, worked at Roubini Global Economics Monitor as Director of Global Research where he co-authored the book "Bailouts or Bail-ins?" with Nouriel Roubini, as a fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, for the United States National Economic Council as Director of International Economics, for the United States Department of the Treasury, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Economic Analysis as senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Carmen M. Reinhart is a Cuban-American economist and the Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System at Harvard Kennedy School. Previously, she was the Dennis Weatherstone Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics at the University of Maryland. She is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, Founding Contributor of VoxEU, and a member of Council on Foreign Relations. She is also a member of American Economic Association, Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association, and the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy. She became the subject of general news coverage when mathematical errors were found in a research paper she co-authored.
The European debt crisis, often also referred to as the eurozone crisis or the European sovereign debt crisis, was a multi-year debt crisis that took place in the European Union (EU) from 2009 until the mid to late 2010s. Several eurozone member states were unable to repay or refinance their government debt or to bail out over-indebted banks under their national supervision without the assistance of other eurozone countries, the European Central Bank (ECB), or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Greece faced a sovereign debt crisis in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Widely known in the country as The Crisis, it reached the populace as a series of sudden reforms and austerity measures that led to impoverishment and loss of income and property, as well as a humanitarian crisis. In all, the Greek economy suffered the longest recession of any advanced mixed economy to date and became the first developed country whose stock market was downgraded to that of an emerging market in 2013. As a result, the Greek political system was upended, social exclusion increased, and hundreds of thousands of well-educated Greeks left the country.
From late 2009, fears of a sovereign debt crisis in some European states developed, with the situation becoming particularly tense in early 2010. Greece was most acutely affected, but fellow Eurozone members Cyprus, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were also significantly affected. In the EU, especially in countries where sovereign debt has increased sharply due to bank bailouts, a crisis of confidence has emerged with the widening of bond yield spreads and risk insurance on credit default swaps between these countries and other EU members, most importantly Germany.
Jens Weidmann is a German economist who served as president of the Deutsche Bundesbank between 2011 and 2021. He also served as chairman of the Board of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) is an intergovernmental organization located in Luxembourg City, which operates under public international law for all eurozone member states having ratified a special ESM intergovernmental treaty. It was established on 27 September 2012 as a permanent firewall for the eurozone, to safeguard and provide instant access to financial assistance programmes for member states of the eurozone in financial difficulty, with a maximum lending capacity of €500 billion. It has replaced two earlier temporary EU funding programmes: the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM).
In the context of sovereign debt crisis, private sector involvement (PSI) refers, broadly speaking, to the forced contribution of private sector creditors to a financial crisis resolution process, and, specifically, to the private sector incurring outright reductions ("haircuts") on the value of its debt holdings.
European debt crisis contagion refers to the possible spread of the ongoing European sovereign-debt crisis to other Eurozone countries. This could make it difficult or impossible for more countries to repay or re-finance their government debt without the assistance of third parties. By 2012 the debt crisis forced 5 out of 17 Eurozone countries to seek help from other nations. Some believed that negative effects could spread further possibly forcing one or more countries into default.
The European debt crisis, often also referred to as the eurozone crisis or the European sovereign debt crisis, was a multi-year debt crisis that took place in the European Union (EU) from 2009 until the mid to late 2010s. Several eurozone member states were unable to repay or refinance their government debt or to bail out over-indebted banks under their national supervision without the assistance of other eurozone countries, the European Central Bank (ECB), or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The eurozone crisis is an ongoing financial crisis that has made it difficult or impossible for some countries in the euro area to repay or re-finance their government debt without the assistance of third parties.
Caroline Hyde is a British journalist specialising in business and technology news. She currently co-anchors "Bloomberg Markets: The Close" show from New York. Prior to that she anchored Bloomberg Technology from San Francisco, and was the Berlin-based chief correspondent for Bloomberg Television, covering European business and technology since 2011 and anchoring the markets and investment show The European Open every morning.
The Month of the Leopard is a book written by Matthew Lynn under the pen name James Harland.
Russia defaulted on part of its foreign currency denominated debt on 27 June 2022, because of funds being stuck in Euroclear. This was its first such default since 1918, back then it was just ruble-denominated bonds, not foreign currency debt. Before that, on 2 June, Russia defaulted on the 30-day interest, incorrectly not counting interest for the grace period, but a failure to pay $1.9 million was not sufficient to trigger a cross-default across other instruments, because the minimum threshold is an amount of at least $75 million, according to documents for other Russian eurobonds. The default occurred due to technicalities as the payment in dollars was impossible due to the sanctions by US and EU authorities, but did not mark an actual lack of capability to pay its debts.