Poole Economist Tom Grennes is Co-author of EconoMonitor Blog

Tom Grennes, professor of economics in the NC State University Poole College of Management, is co-author of the blog aggregator, Thoughts from Across the Atlantic, hosted on the EconoMonitor website.

Grennes and co-author Andris Strazds, senior economist at Nordea Bank in Helsinki, Finland, are part of a small group of regular bloggers on the site sponsored by Roubini Global Economics (RGE), a consulting firm founded by Nouriel Roubini, a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. The site “deals with issues in economics and business, and it has been rated by the Economist as one of the top blogs of its kind,” Grennes said.

As the title of their blog suggests, Grennes said, “We deal mainly with international economics issues with emphasis on the U.S. and Europe. I benefit from Andris’ knowledge of Europe, and he relies on me to know more about the U.S.”

They began blogging in June 2012, he said, “with some voluntary posts related to the Euro crisis, and subsequently we were invited to become regulars. “International economics is my own research and teaching specialty,” Grennes said, “and the blog complements my university activities. One of my recent research topics is the relationship between government debt and economic growth, and there is currently great interest in this subject in both Europe and the U.S.”

Recent posts include: “Can the Fed Kill Two Birds with One Stone,” about the Federal Reserve’s announcement in fall 2012 of Quantitative Easing 3 and related actions by the European Central Bank, and “The U.S. is Sliding Down an Investment Slope,” a more recent post in which the bloggers present a longer-term perspective on current global macroeconomic imbalances.

Strazds is based at Nordea Bank’s offices in Riga, Latvia, and also is a part-time faculty member at the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga. The two economists met in 1994, when the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga was founded by Swedish donors as an English language school for students from Baltic region countries, including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Grennes was a visiting faculty member, and Strazds had won an award as the outstanding student in his class. “He did subsequent graduate work in Stockholm and he has had a successful career in banking and as an economic analyst,” Grennes said.

Strazds had visited Grennes and his colleagues in Poole College’s Department of Economics during a visit to the U.S. in fall 2012.