Thanks for visiting this blog, created in July 2012 out of great concern for the fate of the €uro currency area, once again on the verge of collapse due to the economically ill-advised and heartless austerity policies imposed on Greece, Spain and other heavily-indebted €uro area countries by a christian democratic German chancellor impressed with the budgeting skills of Schwabian housewives. Meant to reduce the public debt and put the countries back on a path to economic growth, these macro-economically idiotic policies are doing anything but cause "pointless misery" as Paul Krugman so aptly describes it (Bloomberg, July 23-29, 2012).

Instead of reducing public debt, the austerity measures set in motion a vicious cycle of economic contraction, rising unemployment and poverty, lower tax revenues, private capital flight, and rising public debt shares as the economy declines faster than the public debt. What’s more, the austerity-driven ‘blood, sweat and tears’ policies recommended to the European periphery derive from the same economic doctrine that brought us to the brink of disaster in 2008. These policies are not only misanthropic and counterproductive to economic growth and debt reduction in Europe, but will prove explosive for the €uro currency area unless a drastic change of course takes place - and soon.

While I do not pretend to have ‘the’ solution for the €uro crisis, I would like to offer alternative economic perspectives and views on current events, and hope to chart a more humane path toward a balanced, socially fair, and sustainable economic future for the €uro area.

On the origins of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis:
“90+% of traders are men, and they bet all of our bank deposits on liar loans which froze credit leading to 40% average losses passed on to ordinary taxpayers; then begged for trillion-dollar bailouts upon which they paid themselves 50% higher boni.”


Friday, August 1, 2014

Closure of this blog and announcement of forthcoming publication

Dear readers,

in contrast to lucky Yanis Varoufakis who stopped posting because he spent his summer vacation on the Greek isles, I stopped posting for more mundane reasons: First, a long-planned trans-atlantic move has kept me away from the pulse of life and economic policymaking in Europe. And second, the economic crisis in the euro zone has calmed down and the focus now seems to be on provoking a war against Russia.  It seems Europeans never learn from history.....  

It's been two years since I started this blog in July 2012 when the euro zone was on the verge of collapse and the days of the common currency seemed numbered. Well, the euro has survived, but the economic and human costs are horrendously high due to the economically non-sensical and inhumane austerity policies I so often criticize in this blog. As a consequence, the euro zone now risks a lost decade (or more) of weak or non-existent economic growth, high unemployment and poverty, rising public debt levels, and a dangerous deflationary spiral.

protest posters in front of the ECB 
And yet, instead of implementing an immediate, Euro-zone wide investment program to create jobs for a lost generation of Europeans, European policy makers seem set on waisting valuable money and energy on an unnecessary conflict with Russia. As so often in the past two years, I feel like hitting my head against the wall...

That, however, is of no use to anybody.  Instead, I'd like to announce a forthcoming publication. It will be a sort of blog diary of the euro crisis from 2012 to 2014, with a selection of the most important posts put in a logical, coherent order. Look out for this publication between September and December 2014. The working title: "From Washington Consensus to Economic Shock Therapy in Europe: A Blog Diary of the Euro Crisis, 2012-2014."  

In the meantime, I may still - from time to time - give my opinion on actual economic policy issues and European economic policy making.  

So long, dear readers, and thanks for your loyal readership.   
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