Raúl Ilargi Meijer — This Is Why The Euro Is Finished
Mike Norman Economics 2015-07-04
Look, it’s simple, the euro is finished. It won’t survive the unmitigated scandal that Greece has become. Greece is not the victim of its own profligacy, it’s the victim of a structure that makes it possible to unload the losses of the big countries’ failing financial systems onto the shoulders of the smaller. There’s no way Greece could win.
The damned lies and liars and statistics that come with all this are merely the cherry on the euro cake. It’s done. Stick a fork in it.
The smaller, poorer, countries in the eurozone need to get out while they can, and as fast as they can, or they will find themselves saddled with ever more losses of the richer nations as the euro falls apart. The structure guarantees it.I agree that this crisis has finished the euro but it probably won't finish it off yet. But the seeds are now laid and inevitable crises in the future will recall the Greek experience that was riddled with duplicity, hidden agendas, malfeasance, and pervasive non-professionalism if not crime in the major EZ institutions right at the top. Trust has evaporated, and it cannot be regained without replacing the people responsible and revising the institutions upon which the EZ is based.
That will not happen if the upshot of the financial crisis in the United States is any indication, and I suspect Wall Street is a paradigm case in a neoliberal order controlled by vested interests. The US financial industry was not significantly reformed in the US and most of the perpetrators remain in place, even after felony charges against principal institutions, but not the officers responsible for establishing a criminogenic environment and running a control fraud. London's answer was even more bizarre, basically declaring the City a free zone. Based on such precedent, it can be expected that the situation in the EZ will not change substantially other than the mortal wounding of the institutions in charge of administering it.
It will likely take at least one more crisis in both the US and the EZ to prompt significant change will be painful for many. It will be avoided as long as possible. But world events are conspiring against domination of the system by the West, which has become rotten at the core, run in the interest of the tops thousandth percent of the population and their minions and cronies, with crumbs for the rest. The top thousandth percent is fast pulling ahead of the rest of the top 1%, which is creating dissatisfaction with distribution at the top of the income and wealth accumulation chain.
This means that the future is increasingly uncertain, and whatever happens in Greece won't have much bearing on it globally. The role of Greece has been as the canary in the coal mine, and now it is clear that the oxygen in the system is running low.
The Automatic Earth This Is Why The Euro Is Finished Raúl Ilargi Meijer