LQD: How Depressingly Right We Have Been | 65 comments (65 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
The problem isn't the concept of a single currency, but the fact that its implementation was left to a nomenklatura of Wall St-inspired rapists and headbangers.
Between concept and implementation comes design, and the design was flawed. Without monetary financing of public debt (which Germany would never have agreed to) or at least a 10-fold expansion of the EU's budget, with federalization of taxation and fiscal policy (which France would never have agreed to), the Euro was doomed to fail as soon as a recession deeper than 3% of GDP hit. Which was ruled out by the faerie tale of "great moderation" after 2000, but remember this was not operative in the politicians' minds in 1992. We know the 3% rule was a completely arbitrary rule used by Mitterrand to rein in spending by his ministers in the 1980s.
The latter are the problem, and progress will be impossible until they're swept from power.
The "nomenklatura" includes a Brussels civil service which has adopted econospeak to an astonishing degree. Everything is "market", everything is "competition"...
And then a coterie of know-nothing politicians who embody the worse of the "common sense" of their voters.
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Nov 2nd, 2014 at 03:31:20 AM EST
afew 4