Euro endspiel

Wolfgang Münchau om en tysk-fransk redningskrans af beton til euroen:

Eurozone countries only act when under immediate pressure. Germany, for example, has a massive problem in its state-owned banking sector, but apart from a reluctant restructuring of WestLB, this is currently no policy priority. The Bundesbank tells everyone that it is not happy about transparency in stress tests, and there is no law in place to force recapitalisations. The relatively calm market situation also explains why 189 economists find the time to write a long letter, criticising what they clearly consider to be the resolution of someone else’s crisis. I am afraid that without a force majeure event, there will be no crisis resolution. A good example is the Spanish recapitalisation of the savings banks. The Spanish government would never have had the courage to force this without the fear of being next in line for a speculative attack.

Apropos mit indlæg om Amagerbanken for næsten to uger siden. Mere Münchau:

The EU’s crisis resolution strategy is to draw attention away from the underlying causes of the crisis: that you cannot have nationally controlled and undercapitalised banking systems in a monetary union with structural current account imbalances. The difficult job is to translate this technical statement into a language understood by politicians and their constituents, and to do so without lying. This is not a fiscal crisis. It is not a crisis of the south. It is a crisis of the private sector and of undercapitalised banks. It is as much a German crisis as it is a Spanish crisis. This acknowledgement must be the starting point of any effective resolution system.

Jeg kender ikke noget særligt til irsk politik, men Fine Gael, Irlands nye store regeringsparti (antageligt), vil sikkert opføre sig som et typisk centrumparti og forsøge at finde den bløde midtervej mellem statsbankerot og ingen genforhandling af EUs lån til Irland. Det virker bare ikke som om tyskerne er i humør til at gå på kompromis. Hvis tyskerne vil ødelægge euroen, så skal de bare blive ved med at forlange det umulige.

Det illustrerer også, hvor tosset euroens konstruktion er, at man overvejer rentestigninger for hele eurozonen, fordi Tyskland oplever en stigende inflation. Det gale vanvid, når randøkonomierne er i voldsom lavkonjektur. Jens Peter Bonde har en udmærket kronik i JP i dag om dette emne.

En mere overordnet pointe er, at højrefløjen ikke har forstand på økonomi, selv om de har jakkesæt på.