Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Yves Smith — Greece, Eurozone Ministers at Fundamental Loggerheads

Bizarrely, there were leaks and news reports of progress all day on the meeting of Eurogroup ministers on a bailout memorandum.
Yves catches us up with a summary.

Naked Capitalism
Greece, Eurozone Ministers at Fundamental Loggerheads
Yves Smith

9 comments:

Malmo's Ghost said...

Smith is far too emotional. She is worthless as a source of meaningful info on what will go down here.

Malmo's Ghost said...

...Fade her and you'll be eons ahead.

Ignacio said...

Yeah, as a long time reader of NC I'm a bit disappointed on the coverage of the euro-fiasco.

NeilW said...

Very much the ivory tower view. You get a similar reality warping effect via people who live in the London financial bubble.

Peter Pan said...

More hand-wringing from a wannabe Eurocrat?

Tom Hickey said...

It always amuses me when people with a different outlook and world view tell us what someone who doesn't hold the same views, or even think like them, is thinking. Do they take themselves for mind readers, or don't they see they are projecting.

This is also true in scholarly interpretation. In many cases the interpretation is mostly a projection of either the scholar's own world view or the way he or she would like things to be. It's actually quite amusing in many cases of "he" and "she" where males see feminazis and females see patriarchy and male privilege.

It's also true in historical studies where the context has been lost and scholars attempt to reconstruct a view of it. It's especially true in politics and political economy where the left and right see demons in each other based on different ideological assumptions and values, owing to cognitive-affective bias. Even more ridiculous are publications on "the mind of Christ" of "the mind of Buddha," as if scholars had any personal insight into this or qualifications for determining it based on rigorous methodology.

Peter Pan said...

Mocking those who believe the EU is worth saving is rather amusing, yes.

Malmo's Ghost said...

Smith regularly claims she has some insider knowledge on various topics, such as this Greek matter, which I suppose is meant to shutdown or at least marginalize opposing viewpoints. She's very bright but also very temperamental. She seems to take dissent from her party line as a personal attack on her or so it seems. Her stridency in favoring the EU as some immutable force for good really perplexes me. She then goes out of her way to argue how catastrophic the EU's demise would be for all involved, even those being shit on by its heavy hand. She keeps claiming it would be illegal for, say, Greece to exit the EU, yet offers little more than tortured reasoning for such a claim. She also has Lambert as a condescending enforcer for those who get ideologically out of line. The chilling effect from their one two punch is palpable and off putting. Makes the place a sterile echo chamber.

Kristjan said...

Only the extreme neoliberals who think politics don't matter and markets rule support federalism in Europe. Even the integrationists don't really support the idea if you ask them: do you want the French or the Germans decide how much we spend on education versus roads etc. Once they realise what the federalism means that there is no more sovereign national states, they don't really like the idea no more. But they still talk about integration. The problem in Europe is that people didn't understand what they joined when they joined the monetary union. How could people have made better choices on this when even Krugman doesn't understand or at least until recently was wondering why interest rates on Italian debt were much higher than on Japanese debt.

Euro sounded really good to the Europeans. It was more than just a currency, It was a symbol of unity, cooperation etc. Countries had to meet certain criterias to join, so it was symbol of success too. (Estonia couldn't join for several years because It had higher inflation than permitted.) Whan finally Estonia met the inflation criteria then you were enemy of the people if you said that euro was flawed. It was always impossible to have any meaningful discussion with anybody on this topic. Even the people who were supportive towards MMT said: euro is our money. They still say that, they believe that this mess needs to be solved on European level.They don't want a sovereign currency. I believe the story is the same in most European states.