The European Tribune is a forum for thoughtful dialogue of European and international issues. You are invited to post comments and your own articles.
Please REGISTER to post.
Presumably the answer for |Greece is to repudiate the debt in total, withdraw from the Euro and accept that the New Drachma is going to start its existence at a low value.
The richer Greeks would then see the value of assets they have kept at home severely depreciate. Foreign creditors would lose their investments. However some new growth could at least try to emerge from the scorched earth of the old economic order.
The above seems to me to be a best case solution for Greece, in the absence of agreement for massive gifts in transfer payments from the richer parts of Europe. Perhaps an intra-European equivalent of the Marshall plan after the Second World War might work, but I doubt either the vision or the altruism (enlightened self interest) to tey such an approach is lacking. Certainly the British public would be strongly opposed.
Masstricht was an idiocy, but in some different reality where Maastricht never happened there would have been nothing inevitable about the current meltdown.
It could easily have been avoided with progressive policies.
The only costs would have been loud but ignorable squealing from 'investors' complaining about being robbed, and about solutions that were inherently unserious and damaging, likely to cause job losses, etc.
As we have noted before, neoliberal fantasy-world economic notions such as the loanable funds fallacy, or the 'facts' that governments both fund themselves in the open market and crowd out private investment are actually institutionally true in the EU, which has legislated itself into a neoliberal fantasy world.
The fact that neoliberal fantasy world economics is untenable and ends up crashing and burning will crash and burn the EU, but in the meantime all political and economic agents in the EU are constrained to operate within neoliberal fantasy world economics.
And you know what's best? Narratively speaking, when it all dies it will be Keynes' fault. tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker
by Luis de Sousa - Feb 28 1 comment
by IdiotSavant - Feb 28
by Frank Schnittger - Feb 23 13 comments
by Oui - Feb 22 19 comments
by Oui - Feb 25
by Frank Schnittger - Feb 20 16 comments
by gmoke - Feb 14 2 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Feb 19 14 comments
by gmoke - Mar 1
by Luis de Sousa - Feb 281 comment
by Oui - Feb 2823 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Feb 2313 comments
by Oui - Feb 2219 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Feb 2016 comments
by Oui - Feb 2021 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Feb 1914 comments
by Oui - Feb 197 comments
by Oui - Feb 18
by Oui - Feb 1781 comments
by Oui - Feb 168 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Feb 1523 comments
by gmoke - Feb 142 comments
by Frank Schnittger - Feb 1413 comments
by Oui - Feb 145 comments
by Oui - Feb 1245 comments
by Oui - Feb 775 comments