Apuntes, de Nick Rowe

Genial Nick Rowe, como casi siempre...
 

An agreement (like most trades) is an exchange of promises. It's hard to get a good agreement if the people you are negotiating with don't trust you. The Nash bargaining solution in a cooperative game (with credible promises) is normally better for both players than the Nash equilibrium in a non-cooperative game. If the Germans had trusted the Greeks, they could have offered an agreement that would have been better for both Germans and Greeks. But the Germans did not trust the Greeks. It seems they trust them even less now. It's not obvious to me the Germans are irrational in this.

If you are a member of the (Euro) club, you can try to change the rules of the club. But if you fail to persuade the other members to change those rules, you either follow those rules in good faith, or else leave the club. A good club should also have rules for members who want to leave the club, but if it doesn't have those rules, you just politely walk out the door.

I think Greg Ip [link? Found it.] is right about the mistake made by economists like me. We underestimated the popular support for the Euro as a political symbol of identity, despite all its economic disadvantages. Playing golf hurts your back, but you want to be a member of the golf club because of who the other members are and the sort of people who are not members.

Or maybe you could argue that the Euro is a bad monetary system, but Greeks believe that a monetary system run by Greeks would be even worse in practice, and that's why they want to keep the Euro.