What with a wild card event every day or two nowadays the kids at the US press desks have been busy. But there’s days of slack too. Like this week. Here’s where the European Union comes in. It’s bad news if you’re over there. For here, it amounts to filler.
Most now understand that shenanigans in the EU club seem detached somehow, claiming little power of impact on the US economy. They may not know why, but that’s ok; they’re right anyhow.
Short of a failure of the currency itself we don’t care very much what happens over there. Our banks are not very exposed. We don’t greatly depend on Europe as a market for US goods.
The whole bunch combined barely belly up to the bar as a US equal.
Niall Ferguson puts it perfectly: “Workers in the periphery took monetary union to mean they should be paid as well as workers in the German core. But their productivity didn’t rise to German levels. At the same time, people in countries like Ireland took the post-1999 reduction in interest rates—one of the most obvious benefits to the periphery of euro membership—as a signal to go on a borrowing binge. The result: Ireland and Spain behaved a lot like Florida and Nevada. House prices bubbled, then burst”
Now what? The European Union with Germany running the show has cobbled a package together. This will provide short term relief. There is no long-term relief. The EU won’t work. It defies human nature.
Margaret Thatcher was right.
Robert Craven
Most now understand that shenanigans in the EU club seem detached somehow, claiming little power of impact on the US economy. They may not know why, but that’s ok; they’re right anyhow.
Short of a failure of the currency itself we don’t care very much what happens over there. Our banks are not very exposed. We don’t greatly depend on Europe as a market for US goods.
The whole bunch combined barely belly up to the bar as a US equal.
Niall Ferguson puts it perfectly: “Workers in the periphery took monetary union to mean they should be paid as well as workers in the German core. But their productivity didn’t rise to German levels. At the same time, people in countries like Ireland took the post-1999 reduction in interest rates—one of the most obvious benefits to the periphery of euro membership—as a signal to go on a borrowing binge. The result: Ireland and Spain behaved a lot like Florida and Nevada. House prices bubbled, then burst”
Now what? The European Union with Germany running the show has cobbled a package together. This will provide short term relief. There is no long-term relief. The EU won’t work. It defies human nature.
Margaret Thatcher was right.
Robert Craven
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