Tag Archives: euro

When will the EU and the ECB Stop Torturing the Greeks?

By William K. Black
January 30, 2017     Bloomington, MN

The troika refers to the European Union (EU), European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).  The IMF, traditionally, was the greatest proponent of any international entity of inflicting extreme austerity on nations suffering economic crises.  The IMF’s economists have increasingly reviewed the evidence and concluded that austerity reduces growth and that putting nations into inescapable debt traps is stupid and harmful.  The EU and the ECB, however, have been impervious to these economic studies and intent on hammering the Greeks.  The purported EU “bailout” of Greece is an exercise in EU propaganda.  Overwhelmingly, EU aid involving Greece goes to Greek banks – and the bank bailout bails out the creditors of Greek banks.  Those creditors, overwhelmingly, are EU banks.

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Is the euro a foreign currency for peripheral Eurozone (EZ) countries? – Part 2

By Ignacio Ramirez Cisneros

Some considerations on the IMF’s Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) latest assessment on the handling of the euro crisis.

Part II

If decisive large scale interventions on the part of the Eurosystem would have been enough to quell financial panic –along with the strategic functioning of the EZ large transactions payment platform, Target2, allowing capital repatriation by core EZ financial agents- the IMF should not have had a role in the crisis resolution process to begin with. The IMF is brought in when a country is in need of foreign reserves to bridge temporary difficulties in the balance of payments or when debt restructuring is imperative. The first case does not apply to any of the main three EZ countries that turned to the IMF for assistance, since the large majority of capital outflows were to EZ partners, and in any case almost all liabilities were euro denominated.  Continue reading

Unintentional Self-Parody: The Failed Banks Warn Scotland Against Independence

By William K. Black

I do not know whether the Scots should vote for independence.  I assume that the odds are they will vote against it.  I do know that the reasons advanced for voting against independence by business interest are false.  Indeed, the opposite of what they claim is far more likely to be true.  What I find a joy to behold, however, is the suggestion by the banksters that the Scots should get their economic advice about independence from a group of failed and often fraudulent parasites and that they should avoid any action that creates “uncertainty” or would cause them to act as a Nation rather than a U.K. province.  There is a serious effort to make independence from the Brits sound like the path of economic madness.

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Warren Mosler’s talk in Chianciano, Italy, January 11, 2014

By Alexandria J E Angus

Warren Mosler gave this talk in Chianciano, Italy, on January 11, 2014 at the Chianciano Conference entitled Oltre L’Euro: La Sinistra. La Crisi. L’Alternativa. In English: Beyond The Euro: The Left. The Crisis. The Alternative [Google translation]. The video is embedded below, but you have to listen to a realtime translation in Italian, which doubles the listening time. I thought this talk important enough to transcribe, if not deliciously subversive on the part of Warren Mosler who offers Italians a way to save their economy. The transcription follows below the video.

Mosler describes how Italy (or any of the 17 EU countries that use the Euro) can leave the European Union safely if the EU persists, as it insists on doing, in impoverishing their country and citizens.

The subheads in blue are mine, not Mosler’s, and are designed to assist reading. Some terms Mosler refers to in the body text relate specifically to the Italian economy, and I can’t identify them because I don’t know their Italian names.

Enjoy.

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How to Exit Austerity, Without Exiting the Euro

By Rob Parenteau

First of all, if a government stops having its own currency, it doesn’t just give up ‘control over monetary policy’…If a government does not have its own central bank on which it can draw cheques freely, its expenditures can be financed only by borrowing in the open market, in competition with businesses, and this may prove excessively expensive or even impossible, particularly under ‘conditions of extreme urgency’…The danger then is that the budgetary restraint to which governments are individually committed will impart a disinflationary bias that locks Europe as a whole into a depression it is powerless to lift.

So wrote the late Wynne Godley in his August 1997 Observer article, “Curried Emu”. The design flaws in the euro were, in fact, that evident even before the launch – at least to those economists willing to take the career risk of employing heterodox economic analysis. Wynne’s early and prescient diagnosis may have come closest to identifying the ultimate flaw in the design of the eurozone – a near theological conviction that relative price adjustments in unfettered markets are a sufficiently strong force to drive economies back onto full employment growth paths.

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Note to Italy: Please send us more Saracenos

By William K. Black
(Cross posted at Benzinga.com)

I began writing this article while returning from presenting at a conference on Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) in Reggio di Calabria, Italy arranged by Francesco Toscano and supported by the Regione Calabria and the Provincia di Reggio Calabria.  MMT has sparked considerable interest in Italy because it puts the lie to the constant claim that there is no alternative (TINA) to austerity and deepening recessions in the Eurozone. Continue reading

Bird Brains: From Austerity to Prosperity

By Avraham Baranes and Stephanie Kelton

Presentation from session on Euro Issues from 11th International Post Keynesian Conference.

Has ‘Super Mario’ Really Saved the Euro?

By Marshall Auerback

Germany’s Constitutional Court gave a green light on Wednesday for the country to ratify Europe’s new bailout fund, boosting hopes that the single currency bloc is finally putting in place the tools to resolve its three-year old debt crisis.

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“Misery”: A Postscript To “The Euro Is Not Unassailable”

By Marshall Auerback

This memorable scene in Misery is a perfect metaphor for the ECB’s much vaunted bond buying program.

In essence you have two distinct, but related problems: the solvency issue and the problem of deficient aggregate demand.

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The Euro Is Not Unassailable, Even With The ECB’s Bond Buying

By Marshall Auerback

There appears to be an emerging consensus that the euro will survive, especially now that Mario Draghi has apparently grasped the nettle and persuaded his colleagues that the ECB is prepared to initiate unlimited purchases of national government bonds in order to underwrite their solvency.  Of course, as usual
with the ECB, there’s a sting in the tail, the sting being additional “conditionality” (for which one can read more fiscal austerity) as a quid pro quo.  It’s like dealing with Hannibal Lecter.

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