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Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

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Re: Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

#31

Post by richardknop »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #23
richardknop wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All big countries disregard EU rules. France has been disregarding rules a lot more and never gets punished according to EU law. Small countries in Eastern Europe get picked on for violating the same stuff France / Italy / Germany violate. So that system has no credibility if not all countries are treated equally. Your point about deficits (Maastricht Treaty and other EU regulations after the crises that passed), eve…

Greece wouldn't have been punished, either, except that they were also asking for help at the same time. At least, I don't think they would have...

With Greece the problem was German/French banks would go under if Greece defaulted on its debts. That's why the pressure on Greece was so high. Basically EU taxpayers sending money to Greece which just sends money right back to the banks so they don't have to write off their loans and bonds.

Re: Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

#32

Post by richardknop »

addicted wrote: post #29
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greece wouldn't have been punished, either, except that they were also asking for help at the same time. At least, I don't think they would have...

The biggest reason the EU needed to be stringent with Greece, according to my Greek friends, was that insane levels of corruption in Greek governments meant the government was almost incapable of collecting taxes. Apparently there was a popular video about an area in Athens where the people paid almost no taxes, but an overhead view showed houses with swimming pools.

Well, yes. But also they had to be very stringent to justify the bailout to their constituencies. Just try to imagine being Angela Merkel and having to sell the idea of German taxpayer money being sent to bail out Greece which got into problems because of their irresponsible and exorbitant spending (instead of spending that money in Germany on healthcare, infrastructure, education etc). Really difficult to sell that to regular German voters. The only way to politically survive that was to be super tough and in exchange for German taxpayer money demand very strict rules of how they will behave after receiving the money.

Re: Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

#34

Post by neilwilson »

l4u532 wrote: post #3

All this Germany bashing and his constant condescending remarks remove a tad of his credibility, which is unfortunate when making such audacious claims. Is there anyone here on HN who has further reading advice on these claims (E.g that the € is malice by design)?

The Euro and the design of the European Union economic system is turning into a prime example of groupthink and denial. There is a very good book on the subject that goes through it all from the start: Eurozone Dystopia https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eurozone-Dystopia-Groupthink-Denial...

Re: Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

#35

Post by InfinityLoop »

skywhopper wrote: post #15
l4u532 wrote: post #3

All this Germany bashing and his constant condescending remarks remove a tad of his credibility, which is unfortunate when making such audacious claims. Is there anyone here on HN who has further reading advice on these claims (E.g that the € is malice by design)?

Not direct malice, but naive over-optimism gone a little too far, perhaps. Krugman has written and spoken a lot about this in a way that's accessible to the interested layman. Search for "krugman optimal currency area", or see https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/revenge-of-the-... . The point is that there are definitely economic benefits to the simplicity and low-overhead of currency union among equal and n…

Krugman has an intolerable ability of making simple concepts quite incomprehensible to the layman (i.e. anyone without a post graduate degree in economics).

I lost interest in what he was saying in his long winded article after the first few paragraphs.

Re: Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

#36

Post by pergadad »

l4u532 wrote: post #3

All this Germany bashing and his constant condescending remarks remove a tad of his credibility, which is unfortunate when making such audacious claims. Is there anyone here on HN who has further reading advice on these claims (E.g that the € is malice by design)?

Varoufakis has found his attention niche in bashing the euro and became popular in certain circles for this. That the euro is malicious by design is obviously ridiculous.

Now here's one fact that nationalists don't like: the euro has a number of aims, including its symbolism of a united Europe, to stabilise the many small currencies and prevent speculation harming it [1], etc. But one of its key ideas is of course also to drive the EU countries closer. All of the EU as we know it today stems from two premises: (1) we are stronger/better off together and (2) we have to bring a.of Europe together and connect it to avoid that it may ever again become a battlefield.

This second lesson, stemming from hundreds of European wars and the nightmares of WW 1 & 2 ist of course fundamentally contrary to the idea of national autonomy. Germany is not going to attack France because both sides would essentially be destroyed and unable to function independently. The same is true for all other EU countries (including the UK, which is why Brexit is such a nightmare for all sides).

Why was the euro so harmful for Greece (Varoufakis' home country)? Two reasons, (1) because it wasn't finished, politicians lost the political will to dare to finalise the project (banking union, eurozone budget, ...) as it meant to give up more power and control to the EU. (2) Greece LIED and produced false national statistics for decades. They didn't actually fulfil the minimum criteria to join the euro. Successive governments falsified the numbers - and when it all came tumbling down (when one government was finally honest!) the Greek citizens paid the price. Greek politicians, over decades, had found it was easier to lie and produced false numbers than actually address the multitude of structural problems Greece faced. The rest of the EU then bailed it out but as a condition for this demanded rather painful reforms. Those were probably too harsh/sudden in many ways, but the real blame should still be attributed to the ones who caused the issue to begin with: the Greek governments that lived off unsustainable debt and got elected for promising more unsustainable spending - and then hid it all with invented numbers.

[1] e.g. see https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/08/george-soros-ban...

Re: Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

#37

Post by pergadad »

InfinityLoop wrote: post #35
skywhopper wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not direct malice, but naive over-optimism gone a little too far, perhaps. Krugman has written and spoken a lot about this in a way that's accessible to the interested layman. Search for "krugman optimal currency area", or see https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/24/revenge-of-the-... . The point is that there are definitely economic benefits to the simplicity and low-overhead of currency union among equal and n…

Krugman has an intolerable ability of making simple concepts quite incomprehensible to the layman (i.e. anyone without a post graduate degree in economics). I lost interest in what he was saying in his long winded article after the first few paragraphs.

Why not challenge yourself rather than blame the author?

Re: Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

#38

Post by pergadad »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #21
mcny wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> The point is that there are definitely economic benefits to the simplicity and low-overhead of currency union among equal and near-equal partners, but when economic conditions vary greatly between regions (or more correctly, when economic conditions change differently over time in various regions), there can be a greater benefit to having different currencies that can trade at different levels against each other t…

> How do we make things work here in the US? By being one country as well as one currency region. That's not just a glib answer. The US can use federal financial transfers to help, say, Mississippi. But the EU can't use direct financial transfers to help Greece, because EU rules (IIUC) don't allow it, and Germany (for example) wouldn't put up with being taxed to pay for it even if the rules allowed it.

Actually Germany is contributing a lot of what are essentially transfers to the east and as the big standout among the EU 'net payer' countries (net payer as in 'pahs more than comes back' - looking just at contributions rather than the net doesn't make sense) in that it volunteered to pay more to keep the budget/benefits for eastern europe the same size after Brexit.

Re: Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

#39

Post by magic-chicken »

l4u532 wrote: post #3

All this Germany bashing and his constant condescending remarks remove a tad of his credibility, which is unfortunate when making such audacious claims. Is there anyone here on HN who has further reading advice on these claims (E.g that the € is malice by design)?

I did not detect any bashing in the video, except toward the whole Euro. On the contrary, I found he was trying very hard not to point fingers at anybody. Also, he asked many times the audience to challenge future panelists (ex. Steve Bannon) on their ideas, and he did so in a very respectful manner. English is not my first language, so I may have missed some things. Could you expand on what part you think he was bashing on Germany or being condescending ?

Re: Yanis Varoufakis: The Euro Has Never Been More Problematic [video]

#40

Post by MsMowz »

pergadad wrote: post #37
InfinityLoop wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Krugman has an intolerable ability of making simple concepts quite incomprehensible to the layman (i.e. anyone without a post graduate degree in economics). I lost interest in what he was saying in his long winded article after the first few paragraphs.

Why not challenge yourself rather than blame the author?

Historically, it’s been the task of intellectuals to try to take complex issues and make them understandable by non-experts. That’s how theory gets connected to practice in democractic societies.
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