El Cuaderno de Arena

De  Kevin O’Rourke:

"An immediate breakup of the eurozone would be a catastrophe, which is why the European Council agreed to a “fiscal stability union” in exchange for some movement by the ECB. This may indeed prevent collapse in the short run – though that is far from certain. Treaty negotiations outside the EU framework, and the ratification procedures that will follow, are a recipe for even more uncertainty when Europe needs it least.

In the slightly longer run, such a deal, assuming that it goes ahead, will mean continued austerity on the eurozone periphery, without the offsetting impact of devaluation or stimulus at the core. Unemployment will continue to rise, placing pressure on households, governments, and banks. We will hear much more about the relative merits of technocracy and democracy. Anti-European sentiment will continue to grow, and populist parties will prosper. Violence is not out of the question.

This summit should have proposed institutional changes to avert such a scenario. But if such changes are politically impossible, and the euro is doomed, then a speedy death is preferable to a prolonged and painful demise. A eurozone collapse in the immediate future would be widely perceived as a catastrophe, which should at least serve as a source of hope for the future. But if it collapses after several years of perverse macroeconomic policies required by countries’ treaty obligations, the end, when it comes, will be regarded not as a calamity, but as a liberation.

And that really would be worse."

Kevin O’Rourke is Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of All Souls College.

A través de  Paul Krugman´s "Orwellian Currency Area"

"Maybe it was always thus, but the relentless wrong-headedness of the Europeans, their insistence on seeing their crisis as something it isn’t, and responding with actions that deepen the real crisis, has been a wonder to behold. In the 1930s policy makers had the excuse of ignorance; there was nobody to explain what was happening. Now, their actions amount to a willful disregard of Econ 101."