EMU Replay of the 30´s

Related: Europakten 2011

1929 - 1937 - Stabiliseringspolitik - Keynes and other Gurus - Finanskrisen - Eurokrisen

At the Chancellery in Berlin, the television images from Athens now remind Merkel's advisers
of conditions in the ill-fated Weimar Republic of 1919-1933.
Der Spiegel, Staff, 14 maj 2012

In 1931, Austria was attempting to deliver the kind of austerity now being witnessed in parts of southern Europe.
The crisis culminated in the failure of Creditanstalt, a major Viennese bank – the 1931 equivalent of Lehman Brothers.
A handful of years later, Hitler was welcomed by cheering crowds in Vienna.
Stephen King, HSBC Group’s chief economist, Financial Times, 9 May 2012

Plans show Germany will meet its debt brake goal
- which foresees a cut in the structural deficit to no more than 0.35 percent of gross domestic product -
two years earlier than previously expected in 2014 and balance the budget in 2016.
CNBC 21 March 2012

The fiscal compact that was the summit’s centrepiece is flawed
The idea is to write fiscal discipline into national constitutions
But such a compact will not safeguard the euro against future booms and busts.
Until financial markets crashed in 2008, Spain and Ireland were hailed as economic stars,
with lower public-debt burdens and healthier budgets than Germany.
The Economist print, Dec 17th 2011

Alla euroländer ska införa en ny finanspolitisk regel enligt vilken
det strukturella budgetunderskottet får vara högst 0,5 procent av BNP.
Är dessa åtgärder tillräckliga för att massiva ECB-stöd ska vara förenliga med ett långsiktigt hållbart system?
Enligt min mening är svaret nej.
Lars Calmfors, kolumn DN 13 december 2011

EU på väg upprepa Tysklands misstag
Rolf Englund blog 10 december 2011

The long shadow of the 1930s
Could things go bad again?
I mean really bad – Great Depression bad, world war bad?
The kind of cataclysmic event my generation has learned to think belongs only in the history books.
Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, November 28, 2011

If I had to give a snap judgment on the embryonic plan to “save the euro”,
I would say it is deflationary in the short term and inflationary in the long term
If the Republicans do well in the 2012 US elections, the stage will be set for a repetition of
many of the economic errors of the 1930s, when countries tried to fight depression with cuts of all kinds.
Samuel Brittan, 15 December 2011

German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble – the most dangerous man in the world – is imposing a reactionary policy of synchronized tightening on the whole eurozone
through the EU institutions, invoking a doctrine of “expansionary fiscal contractions”
that has no record of success without offsetting monetary and exchange stimulus.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, DT, 20 Nov 2011

Europe stumbles blindly towards its 1931 moment
Unless the ECB takes fast and dramatic action, it risks destroying the currency it is paid to manage, and allowing a political catastrophe to unfold in Europe.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 14 Nov 2010

Depression and Democracy
Unemployment in both America and Europe remains disastrously high.
Leaders and institutions are increasingly discredited.
And democratic values are under siege.
Paul Krugman, New York Times, December 11, 2011

Orwellian Currency Area
Kevin O’Rourke has a very good point:
what European leaders are describing as “fiscal union” is very nearly the opposite
Paul Krugman, December 10, 2011

Events on the Continent have come to feel much like the drift into war.
There is a feeling of powerless inevitability about it.
Jeremy Warner, 1 Dec 2011