Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant

Raccomando a tutti la lettura del lungo articolo di Paul Krugman dedicato alla storia e alla crisi dell'euro: l'analisi è lucida e condivido la critica delle celebrazioni di quei paesi come l'Irlanda e l'Estonia che hanno imposto una disciplina fiscale e di biliancio talmente severa da rassicurare sì i mercati ma anche da assicurare ai propri cittadini una depressione. Secondo Krugman la proposta Tremonti-Junker è un passo nella direzione giusta, anche se pensa che sia insufficiente:


In early December, Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg, and Giulio Tremonti, Italy’s finance minister, created a storm with a proposal to create “E-bonds,” which would be issued by a European debt agency at the behest of individual European countries. Since these bonds would be guaranteed by the European Union as a whole, they would offer a way for troubled economies to avoid vicious circles of falling confidence and rising borrowing costs. On the other hand, they would potentially put governments on the hook for one another’s debts — a point that furious German officials were quick to make. The Germans are adamant that Europe must not become a “transfer union,” in which stronger governments and nations routinely provide aid to weaker.
Yet as the earlier Ireland-Nevada comparison shows, the United States works as a currency union in large part precisely because it is also a transfer union, in which states that haven’t gone bust support those that have. And it’s hard to see how the euro can work unless Europe finds a way to accomplish something similar.
Nobody is yet proposing that Europe move to anything resembling U.S. fiscal integration; the Juncker-Tremonti plan would be at best a small step in that direction. But Europe doesn’t seem ready to take even that modest step.


Alla crisi dell'eurozona è anche dedicato un articolo dell'Economist che suggerisce di intraprendere con decisione la via della ristrutturazione del debito per i paesi insolventi:

Europe’s bail-out strategy, designed to calm financial markets and place a firewall between the euro zone’s periphery and its centre, is failing. Investors are becoming more, not less, nervous, and the crisis is spreading. Plan A, based on postponing the restructuring of Europe’s struggling countries, was worth trying: it has bought some time. But it is no longer working. Restructuring now is more clearly affordable than it was last year. It is also surely cheaper for everybody than it will be in a few years’ time. Hence the need for Plan B. (...) Based on this newspaper’s calculations (see article), that group should start with Greece and probably also include Portugal and Ireland. Spain has deep problems, but even with a big bank bail-out it should be able to keep its public debt at a sustainable level (see article). Italy and Belgium have high debt levels but more ample private savings, and their underlying budgets are closer to surplus. There is, thus, a reasonable chance that, handled correctly, euro-zone sovereign defaults could be limited to three small, peripheral economies.

Secondo l'Economist bisogna approffittare della discreta salute delle banche e dell'economia: 

But the European economy, as a whole, is now in better shape. Banks have had time to build up more capital—and palm off some of their holdings of dodgy sovereign bonds to the European Central Bank. Greece and other peripherals have shown their mettle with austerity plans. Europe’s officials have created mechanisms to stump up rescue money quickly. And lawyers have been thinking about managing an “orderly” default. A sovereign restructuring could still spook financial markets—fear that it would spread panic makes Europe’s politicians shy away from it—but if handled correctly, it should not spawn Lehman-like chaos.
At the same time the costs of buying time with loans have become painfully clear. The burden on the countries that have been rescued is enormous. Despite the toughest fiscal adjustment by any rich country since 1945, Greece’s debt burden will, on plausible assumptions, peak at 165% of GDP by 2014. The Irish will toil for years to service rescue loans that, at Europe’s insistence, pay off the bondholders of its defunct banks. At some point it will become politically impossible to demand more austerity to pay off foreigners.

Intanto questa settimana è bastato che Trichet abbaiasse all'inflazione perchè si creasse uno short squeeze che ha fatto schizzare l'euro di quasi il 4% sul dollaro in poco più di 24 ore, il tutto mentre Sarkozy a Tolosa visitando i cantieri dell'Airbus si lamentava dell'euro troppo forte...Sulla sopravvalutazione dell'euro per i paesi del Mediterraneo e sulla sua sottovalutazione per calmare gli incubi di iperinflazione dei tedeschi vi consiglio la lettura di questo commento.