<story><title>What really caused the eurozone crisis?</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16290598</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gizmo</author><text>Pretty good analysis (for an infographic).&lt;p&gt;They correctly show that government debt did not cause the current crisis but total debt did. By stating that the increase in private sector debt caused it they almost (incorrectly) imply that therefore the private sector (and the people) are to blame. Of course it&apos;s the responsibility of the government to take corrective measures to ensure long term financial stability. The European governments were completely negligent in that regard. Note also that the financial sector is not mentioned at all in this analysis.&lt;p&gt;The nasty dilemma offered at the end is a false one. First the article observes that government spending was not the cause of the crisis, and then the solution revolves around government spending? The current eurozone debates are about politics: the people in western Europe want to punish the countries they see as irresponsible. That&apos;s why we have all the talk about austerity measures. Austerity will only further cripple the economies of the GIPS countries as we&apos;ve seen during the Great Depression in the 30s. Austerity doesn&apos;t work: it leads to criminal levels of capital waste: high unemployment, low standards of living, poor liquidity, and so on.&lt;p&gt;So the question isn&apos;t &quot;Should the GIPS countries spend money to prevent a worse recession?&quot; the real question is &quot;How can the GIPS countries get the money to prevent a crushing depression and a lost generation?&quot;. There are a number of options: ECB bailout. Eurobonds. Bailout by the richer part of the eurozone. Various forms of quantitative easing. Unfortunately this is difficult as long as the people in Europe are angry at the GIPS countries. No politician is going to support a bailout at the expense of the richer countries if the people want to see blood.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>chernevik</author><text>But it misses other issues:&lt;p&gt;-  No discussion of &quot;off balance&quot; sheet government obligations, like pensions and entitlements.  These don&apos;t count as &quot;debt&quot;, as they aren&apos;t bonds, but they are long-term cash flow obligations that reduce resources available for debt service&lt;p&gt;-  Likewise, no discussion of public sector compensation in excess of a position&apos;s productivity&lt;p&gt;-  No discussion of economic growth rates, which expand the amount of debt a country can sustain&lt;p&gt;-  No discussion of the role of low euro rates in private sector debt expansion.  Markets presumed governments could and would bail out their banks, and thus didn&apos;t scrutinize bank assets for recovery values.  (The graphic ignores financial sector debt, but that&apos;s debt _of_ the banks, not debt _to_ the banks.)  The conflation of bank and government debt is a running theme in the euro crisis, see Sarkozy&apos;s remark that though the ECB wouldn&apos;t lend to governments it would lend to banks, and the banks would lend to governments, problem solved.&lt;p&gt;The graphic thus understates the sovereign obligations.  By ignoring growth, it ignores the key variable driving differences in perceived debt sustainability.  And by ignoring market preconceptions of government backstops for banks, it misses the role of the euro in those private sector debt levels.&lt;p&gt;The clue is this: why doesn&apos;t the graphic explain sovereign difficulties borrowing, evident in their rising yields?  Bond buyers are saying that _governments_ won&apos;t be able to sustain their debts.  That might reflect an opinion that governments will borrow unsustainably to bail out their banks.  But then the solution would be to let the banks collapse and remove that possibility.  But the governments can&apos;t do that because their economies are dependent on excess bank leverage for the growth they do have, and for the one source of financing they do have.&lt;p&gt;So if we agree the wicked bankers did it, we&apos;re saying that governments have been using excess bank leverage to hide the lack of fundamental growth, and extent of structural problems.&lt;p&gt;The truth is that the problem is excess leverage and spending in both public and private sectors.&lt;p&gt;P.S.  It&apos;s the same story in the US, lagging by a few years and mitigated by our ability to print money.</text></comment>
<story><title>What really caused the eurozone crisis?</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-16290598</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>gizmo</author><text>Pretty good analysis (for an infographic).&lt;p&gt;They correctly show that government debt did not cause the current crisis but total debt did. By stating that the increase in private sector debt caused it they almost (incorrectly) imply that therefore the private sector (and the people) are to blame. Of course it&apos;s the responsibility of the government to take corrective measures to ensure long term financial stability. The European governments were completely negligent in that regard. Note also that the financial sector is not mentioned at all in this analysis.&lt;p&gt;The nasty dilemma offered at the end is a false one. First the article observes that government spending was not the cause of the crisis, and then the solution revolves around government spending? The current eurozone debates are about politics: the people in western Europe want to punish the countries they see as irresponsible. That&apos;s why we have all the talk about austerity measures. Austerity will only further cripple the economies of the GIPS countries as we&apos;ve seen during the Great Depression in the 30s. Austerity doesn&apos;t work: it leads to criminal levels of capital waste: high unemployment, low standards of living, poor liquidity, and so on.&lt;p&gt;So the question isn&apos;t &quot;Should the GIPS countries spend money to prevent a worse recession?&quot; the real question is &quot;How can the GIPS countries get the money to prevent a crushing depression and a lost generation?&quot;. There are a number of options: ECB bailout. Eurobonds. Bailout by the richer part of the eurozone. Various forms of quantitative easing. Unfortunately this is difficult as long as the people in Europe are angry at the GIPS countries. No politician is going to support a bailout at the expense of the richer countries if the people want to see blood.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jonnathanson</author><text>At the end of the day, the Europeans can&apos;t have their cake and it eat, too. Either the Eurozone is a truly integrated, multinational superentity, or it&apos;s a meaningless construct on top of a group of wholly independent nations. It can&apos;t be the former when things are going well, and the latter when things are going poorly. A fairweather EU / economic zone doesn&apos;t work, because it&apos;s built on a foundation of quicksand.&lt;p&gt;How can these countries rely on a cooperative economic superstructure when, beneath it all, they still see each other as competitors? Transnationalism doesn&apos;t work when you&apos;re secretly a nationalist.</text></comment>