Saturday, February 18, 2012

The Great European Fire Sale


All over Europe, nations have been looking for a quick, innovative way out of the debt trap. Unfortunately, they've all had the same idea. Tom Bawden explains, while Charlie Cooper anatomises the great European fire sale
Read it at The Independent (UK)
Everything Must Go! The Great European Fire Sale
(h/t Lambert Strether via Naked Capitalism)

As I recall, Bill Mitchell was predicting this forced outcome owing to the deficiencies in the construction of the EZ, which would overly restrict policy space. He also predicted the consequences, and things seem to be on track with that prediction.

The result was a deflationary bias that has resulted in the nations of the EMU being at a severe disadvantage as currency users after having ceded currency sovereignty to the Eurocrats, who are controlled by financial interests. The upshot is that even by privatizing the commons, the EZ nations will be no better off in that they will not have increased their policy space and will face the same contraints. Instead of TINA (there is no other way), they are now faced with there is no way out other than through abandoning the euro and reasserting currency sovereignty. The alternative is rising social unrest and eventually political backlash resulting in regime change.

2 comments:

Ryan Harris said...

Irish Independent News Paper headline story this weekend: Banks tell homeowners in default to cut health insurance . More of the vicious downward spiral to hell.

John Zelnicker said...

Tom -- Just another way for the rentiers to get more rent at the expense of the public. Unfortunately, I think Bill nailed the process all the way through. I really worry that the social unrest stage will be nasty.