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Re: The paradoxi of Greece

By: Cactus Flower in ALEA | Recommend this post (0)
Tue, 07 Jul 15 5:20 AM | 109 view(s)
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Msg. 17137 of 54959
(This msg. is a reply to 17135 by Down And Out Man)

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No. You are correct. She stood in the face of the many. But actually, the Labour party continued with the same idea of remaining outside the Euro. The folks who wanted in are mostly discredited at this point. Even if no one ever admits being wrong about anything.

The economic analysis against the euro has always been correct, in my view. It isn't a left versus right thing. It's about optimal currency areas. What is practical not what political ideals do you have. The real question was how long would the structural issues take to break the euro. We now know that timeline.

Europe doesn't have the kind of labour-force flexibility the US does: people cannot move easily to where the jobs are because everyone speaks different languages and lives within dissimilar cultures. The economies aren't always synchronised. Some areas do well and others do badly and need different sorts of financial support and currency values at any particular point in time. In the US areas that are doing badly (eg Florida when the housing market crashed) are supported by the central government with the pain shared across the population, whereas in Europe, countries like Greece were ruined while Germany has thrived but the Greeks also were expected to pay their own bills. So not only did the Greeks find themselves with a mispriced currency for their economic conditions, they also ended up with a huge debt as a result.

So the European economy just isn't well-suited to a one-size-fits-all currency. It does what is right for the Germans. If you are German, it's great. If you are everyone else, it is not so great, to varying degrees.

Austerity cannot solve such a problem. Only having your own currency can help.




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The above is a reply to the following message:
Re: The paradoxi of Greece
By: Down And Out Man
in ALEA
Mon, 06 Jul 15 7:02 PM
Msg. 17135 of 54959

Corralling countries into a single currency was a gigantic mistake.

Admittedly, I didn't pay a ton of attention at the time, and my memory is getting hazy anyway, but...

Didn't Thatcher warn against something very similar to what is unfolding? Or am I dreaming?


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