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Articles by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard that I found especially interesting
If you have half an hour, read this paper (pdf) by
Philip Whyte and Simon Tilford for the Centre for European Reform.
The deeper causes of Europe’s crisis and why the reactionary policies imposed Germany’s Wolfgang Schauble and the northern neo-Calvinists will lead to certain disaster.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard November 21st, 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
If Germany genuinely wishes to save Spain and Italy, it must allow EMU-wide reflation and
mobilize the ECB as a lender of last resort to halt the bond crisis, since the EFSF rescue fund does not exist.
To create a currency without such a backstop is criminally irresponsible.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, DT, 20 Nov 2011
A German veto and EU treaty constraints stop ECB intervening with overwhelming force as a genuine lender of last resort.
The bank is itself at risk of massive over-extension without an EU treasury and single sovereign entity to back it up.
This lack of a back-stop guarantor is an unforgivable failing in the institutional structure of monetary union.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 6 Nov 2011
Unless the European Central Bank step in very soon and on a massive scale to shore up Italy, the game is up.
We will have a spectacular smash-up.
Italy is not fundamentally insolvent. It is only in these straits because it does not have a lender of last resort, a sovereign central bank, or a sovereign currency.
The euro structure itself has turned a solvent state into an insolvent state. It is reverse alchemy.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 1 November 2011
Certain architects of EMU calculated that the single currency would itself become the catalyst for a quantum leap in integration that could not be achieved otherwise.
This was the Monnet Method of fait accompli and facts on the ground. These great manipulators of Europe’s destiny may yet succeed.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 1 November 2011
As Sir John Major wrote this morning in the FT, this does not solve EMU’s fundamental problem,
which is the 30pc gap in competitiveness between North and South,
and Germany’s colossal intra-EMU trade surplus at the expense of Club Med deficit states.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 27 Oct 2011
Big snag.
If Europe’s leaders do indeed leverage their €440bn bail-out fund (EFSF) to €2 trillion or €3 trillion
through some form of "first loss" insurance on Club Med bonds – as markets now seem to assume –
the consequences will be swift and brutal.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, October 17th, 2011
To be continued
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...
To those loudly insisting all this week that Britain should have
joined the euro ten years ago,
I can only say: are you completely mad?
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 08 May 2008
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