Comments on: The creaking European austerity machine http://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-creaking-european-austerity-machine/ Red Pepper Wed, 18 Sep 2013 10:05:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 By: annabel pritchard http://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-creaking-european-austerity-machine/#comment-4700 annabel pritchard Sun, 06 Mar 2011 13:47:47 +0000 http://www.redpepper.org.uk/?p=3142#comment-4700 I remember being glad we don’t have the Euro here in the UK when an Italian told me several years ago that a great many of his national compatriots did not trust the Euro – chiefly because Italians felt that prices had been deliberately rounded up when Lire was abolished and also they felt the new currency was designed to be for the benefit of big business and not the ordinary citizen.

Look at the pain the Euro is now wrecking on ordinary citizens. Considering this and my conversation with the Italian several years back I would be very happy for the Euro to go.

]]> By: Lip http://www.redpepper.org.uk/the-creaking-european-austerity-machine/#comment-4451 Lip Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:15:25 +0000 http://www.redpepper.org.uk/?p=3142#comment-4451 Keynesianism is basically the believe that you can spend yourself to prosperity, a ridiculous notion, and anything Keynes’ followers propose is tainted by by that notion.

Also if the Greeks are uncompetitive, devaluations (assuming they still had the drachma) will only buy a temporary reprieve. They’d have to continuously devalue, something that will stoke domestic inflation.

The reason austerity is difficult is the similar to a drug user going cold turkey. Instead of a gradual “weening off” from the debt drug, they are forced to go cold turkey. Expect a lot of disruptions. This is failure of governance.

Also, the Greeks should have told the EU to stuff their “bail out” package. Let the banks go under. It would have been chaos sure, but the Greeks would have been better off. The problem is, it seems like the whole “bail out” won’t work in any case, so their just prolonging the pain and the inevitable.

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