This is a guest from a very talented writer, Róbert Palasik

Besides the Olympics, one of the biggest public events in Europe this weekend is the Sziget Festival, with a live Youtube broadcast and 385,000 visitors last year, generating a whopping 10,000,000 € income for the organisers – but does it make the organizers rich? Discover the inner workings of festival organizing, and get answers to your questions.

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This is a guest from a very talented writer, Róbert Palasik

In our earlier posts about monetary policy, we've written about monetary regimes – but we are yet to show how the different mentalities consider different statistical data and have different targets set for them. So we invite the readers to a Game of Rates – by comparing the Hungarian and American central banker simulator, created by the respective central banks, we will show what differences are there between these two countries' monetary mentalities.

An economic recovery is typically measured by several economic indicators that suggest whether an economy has the ability to recover or it will take a downturn. The U.S economy is officially in recession since December 2007. The U.S national debt has topped $14.3 trillion, while President Obama’s budget estimates that in 2011 the national debt will reach approximately $15.5 trillion or 102.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). On the other hand, leading indicators of the U.S economy, including GDP, employment, housing market and consumer confidence, are performing relatively good, showing a sign of economic recovery.

The international monetary system consists of institutional arrangements that govern exchange rates and determine the relative value of a currency. The world's four major currencies are the US Dollar, the European Union's Euro, the Japanese Yen and the British Pound, which are all free to float against each other and thus their exchange rates are determined by market forces and fluctuate against each other day to day. An obvious implication with regards to currency management is that the current system that drives the foreign exchange market is a mixed system of government intervention and speculative activity.

On September 11, 2009 U.S. President Obama imposed a three-year tariff on car and light-truck tires imported from China as a response to the United Steelworkers union complaint that 5,000 people have lost their jobs since 2004 as a result of the U.S. market being flooded by cheap Chinese imports. The imposition of a 35 percent duty for the first year, 30 percent for the second year and 25 percent for the third year on Chinese-made tires caused the strong opposition of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. The Chinese government views the U.S. move as a severe act of trade protectionism that constitutes a violation of the rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO), but also a direct contravention of U.S. commitments at the G-20 Financial Summit.

In January 2012, more than 24 million men and women in the EU-27 are reported "unemployed", with the unemployment rate being 10.1%, increased by 6.3% since January 2011 (9.5%). According to Eurostat, Ireland, Portugal, Slovakia, Croatia, Latvia and Lithuania expose a rate above 13%, Spain above 23%, while Greece's rate is 19.9% as reported in November 2011. In younger populations, the situation is even worse as in the EU-27, the rate is 22.4%, while in the euro area the rate is 21.6 %. This is an increase of 6.1% and 4.85% since January 2011, when the rate was 21.1% and 20.6% respectively.

One year ago, financial markets and politicians were grappling with the newly-surfaced debt crisis in Greece. Today, the country's credit rating is in trouble and the debt crisis has spread to a handful of other EU countries.

INSEAD Political Science Professor Douglas Webber offers a perspective, starting with the question of whether or not Greece will remain a member of the European Union.