Daily Archives: September 18, 2011

By L. Randall Wray

In the next series of blogs we will look in more detail at fiscal and monetary operations of a nation with a sovereign currency. Before we do that, let us briefly examine the case of the Euro. Let me say that we will not address the unfolding crisis across Euroland in detail. The reason is that events are moving too quickly and we do not know where they will lead. This primer in some sense needs to be “timeless”—anything specific that we discuss will quickly become outdated. The fundamental point to be made here is that the Euro arrangement was flawed from the beginning. Crisis was inevitable—as I have been writing since the mid 1990s. There is no way the system as designed could possibly survive a significant financial crisis. And a crisis began in 2007. Due to flaws in the set-up, it was obvious (at least to those who adopted MMT) that the original arrangement was not sustainable. We could not say for sure how the resolution would turn-out, but a fundamental change would be required.

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