The eurozone is at the center of the global financial crisis, because only there, in the realm of the second most important currency after the dollar, does the crisis hit a weak structure rather than a state with real power. Anything less than a United States of Europe will not be powerful enough to prevent the looming disaster.
BERLIN – The eurozone is at the center of the global financial crisis, because only there, in the realm of the second most important currency after the dollar, does the crisis hit a weak “structure” rather than a state with real power. It is a structure that is squandering the trust of citizens and markets in its ability to resolve conflicts – while pushing the international financial system to the brink of disaster.
In other words, the financial crisis now reflects a political crisis of the eurozone – one that calls into question the very existence of the European project as a whole. If Europe’s monetary union fails, not much of the common market, or of European institutions and treaties, will be left. We would have to write off six decades of successful European integration, with unknown consequences.
This failure would coincide with the emergence of a new world order, as two centuries of Western predominance come to an end. Power and wealth are shifting towards East Asian and other emerging countries, while America will be preoccupied with its own problems and turning from the Atlantic towards the Pacific. If Europeans don’t address their interests now, no one will do it for them. If Europe today does not become the agent of its own destiny, it will become the object of new world powers.
With equity markets reaching new heights at a time of rising income and wealth inequality, it should be obvious that today's market mania will end in tears, reproducing the economic injustices of the 2008 crash. For all of the talk of supporting households, it is Main Street that will suffer most when the music stops.
worries that the US recovery is heading for another bout of market mania that will leave Main Street worse off.
Both supporters and critics of US President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan assume that there is a dollar amount that is just right. In fact, no such figure exists: every possible stimulus size is simultaneously too little and too big.
shows why there is no longer any amount of additional US fiscal spending that is just right.
BERLIN – The eurozone is at the center of the global financial crisis, because only there, in the realm of the second most important currency after the dollar, does the crisis hit a weak “structure” rather than a state with real power. It is a structure that is squandering the trust of citizens and markets in its ability to resolve conflicts – while pushing the international financial system to the brink of disaster.
In other words, the financial crisis now reflects a political crisis of the eurozone – one that calls into question the very existence of the European project as a whole. If Europe’s monetary union fails, not much of the common market, or of European institutions and treaties, will be left. We would have to write off six decades of successful European integration, with unknown consequences.
This failure would coincide with the emergence of a new world order, as two centuries of Western predominance come to an end. Power and wealth are shifting towards East Asian and other emerging countries, while America will be preoccupied with its own problems and turning from the Atlantic towards the Pacific. If Europeans don’t address their interests now, no one will do it for them. If Europe today does not become the agent of its own destiny, it will become the object of new world powers.
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