2 de outubro de 2011

O que está a causar a crise na Zona Euro?

É um artigo em duas partes. Muito bom. Refere as causas, as responsabilidades e as possíveis saídas. Leitura recomendada.


I've been doing some work on gaining a better understanding of the root causes of eurozone (EZ) debt crisis. As a point of departure, let's take a couple of dueling quotes. First, Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister, from his recent piece in the Financial Times:

Whatever role the markets have played in catalysing the sovereign debt crisis, it is an undisputable fact that excessive state spending has led to unsustainable levels of debt and deficits that now threaten our economic welfare.

Next, here's an excerpt from a statement recently made by Greece's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Evangelos Venizelos:

We should not be the scapegoat or the easy excuse that will be used by European and international institutions in order to hide their own lack of competence to manage the crisis and give a definitive and complete answer to the attacks against euro, the world’s strongest currency.

These two statements capture the essence of two radically different views about the origins of the EZ debt crisis. Which one is right? [....]



In the previous post I sketched out the origins of the eurozone crisis, and argued that powerful systemic forces, not irresponsible behavior, pushed the periphery countries toward crisis – and may well have done so no matter what the peripheral eurozone countries had done. The common currency encouraged (in fact, was designed to encourage) large-scale capital flows from the eurozone (EZ) core to periphery. We know from experience that such “capital flow bonanzas” are susceptible to sudden changes in investor sentiment, and very often come to a sudden stop. The sudden stop in this case happened in 2009 (exploring the specific reasons for that stop is interesting, but will have to wait for another day), made it difficult for the periphery countries to roll over their debt, and thus caused a crisis.

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