It's easy to see the story from that side and I think it's not "wrong", but the geopolitical story is being missed.
Greece has in a way helped the ECB by distracting economic pundits from their various other failures in the recession and recovery process. The truth is that we're all so used to being mad at the ECB that liberals are now confounded by the least bad thing they've done in a while.
It's long since known and agreed that austerity policies were detrimental to the recovery. The thing is that Europe's failure to pursue expansionary monetary policyead to both diminished inflation (which means debts have larger real value) and diminished growth in the eurozone, both of which hindered Greece et al's ability to repay debts regardless of the terms they were given. That's added to the fact that inflation couldn't happen and internal devaluation wouldn't happen as chosen by the Greek people. And internal devaluation, what happened in Ireland, is a pretty ugly process, though Ireland would be okay right now if the ECB hadn't also blown the recovery in general, methinks.
Now the issue is whether Greece gets what everyone else got. It's fair, but it isn't exactly right. And the ECB has distracted everyone from their big failures.
This is also being tossed around as proof that currency unions don't work! That's kind of a strong conclusion. I think it could work if it were well managed and smaller and less diverse. A couple of economies in similar situations with proper economic management can probably keep things together with only a small chance of an Ireland-style devaluation (and no Greece events), and in the future the charter could predict these sort of things.
That it turned into a call for political fusion of Europe is scary. I get that nationalism is bad and all, but you want to redraw the map and the culture...
Greece has in a way helped the ECB by distracting economic pundits from their various other failures in the recession and recovery process. The truth is that we're all so used to being mad at the ECB that liberals are now confounded by the least bad thing they've done in a while.
It's long since known and agreed that austerity policies were detrimental to the recovery. The thing is that Europe's failure to pursue expansionary monetary policyead to both diminished inflation (which means debts have larger real value) and diminished growth in the eurozone, both of which hindered Greece et al's ability to repay debts regardless of the terms they were given. That's added to the fact that inflation couldn't happen and internal devaluation wouldn't happen as chosen by the Greek people. And internal devaluation, what happened in Ireland, is a pretty ugly process, though Ireland would be okay right now if the ECB hadn't also blown the recovery in general, methinks.
Now the issue is whether Greece gets what everyone else got. It's fair, but it isn't exactly right. And the ECB has distracted everyone from their big failures.
This is also being tossed around as proof that currency unions don't work! That's kind of a strong conclusion. I think it could work if it were well managed and smaller and less diverse. A couple of economies in similar situations with proper economic management can probably keep things together with only a small chance of an Ireland-style devaluation (and no Greece events), and in the future the charter could predict these sort of things.
That it turned into a call for political fusion of Europe is scary. I get that nationalism is bad and all, but you want to redraw the map and the culture...
...so you can keep the money.