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Europe: denial or misplaced values?
Europe: denial or misplaced values? Europe’s problem is simple to see and it’s just as easy to see why all these fixes fail. When you fix the symptom you don’t cure the disease. In this case curing the disease probably will involve killing the patient (the euro). Competitiveness differences within the Zone are too wide and are too entrenched to deal with without undermining the very basis of the Zone, which is to defend the single currency. Letting currency (or country) parities readjust is the only real solution. The price level differences in Europe are so severe that they cannot be handled by ‘internal devaluation’ otherwise known as deflation. Asking a generation of people to undergo deflation to keep the euro intact is a bad case of misplaced values. And that is where Europe is right now. It is upside-down and backwards. It is no wonder Europeans can’t find a solution. You can go through the haystack with the best scientific equipment and powerful magnets but if there is no needle there you will not find one. And the EMU is simply looking in the wrong haystack because it does not want to, and the IMF does not want to, face up to the real problem.
It’s unsolvable in the context of a single currency zone. That’s what it is.
When economic forces are pulling your currency zone apart you can’t keep it together without stopping the forces that cause those tectonic plates to drift apart. Expressions of unity won’t do it. Raising taxes won’t do it. Big Bazooka funds won’t do it. The Zone keeps looking for a fix in the wrong haystack and that just won’t do it either. In the end to fix the problem you must break up the union.
Period.
It’s not because of costs or because it is better for country X.Y or Z. It’s because if EMU does not do this things just continue to get worse.
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This is a Zerohedge article? Really? Whats happened to Zerohedge? Now theyre running a comment as an article, and economic celebrity puff pieces as articles all over the place. I may as well be reading Yahoo!Finance.
Now the link spammers are posting articles.
It's a pure baiting page like Graham Summers, some twisted piece of humor
Nice avatar, Jack. Are you my sex bomb?
"Pure baiting page" --- good description!
Or, as I like to call it, Trolling for Hollers.
>>"it’s just as easy to see why all these fixes fail."<<
BOB!! YOU MAKE ME LOL!!
This little statement of yours, which many ZH'ers hold as self evident, negates all of your "bullish" economic theory. The proverbial shit is about to hit the global economic fan, buddy. You won;t even have time to take your money out of the bank, let alone admit to being wishy-washy on economic theory...
?
I do not have a bullish theory.
I may reach a bullish conclusion now and then but that is oh so different.
If anyone ever calls me Mr 7 I'll know I'm in trouble.
I don't know Mr 6+1 that fear just doesn't add up
That is a good one. You have to give it to him.
The day you learn how to count and put the 10 T Euro public debt; of which 50% is post-2008 induced; done in Panic in Needle-park mode by all these patsy governments, to socialise PART of the much bigger global, incestuous, Madoff scammed, private sector bank debt; you will understand what the word DENIAL really means in today's financial and economic terms.
The current private sector debt in Europe is potentially : 15-30 T if there is massive meltdown. So when you understand that and when you understand that in the USA, where official public debt is 16T, and unofficial private sector debt is 100T +, depending on the size of potential unwind and the inevitable mark to market which ensues, it puts things in perspective.
The REAL denial is the PAX Americana monetary debt mountain construct based on USD petrodollar hegemony in first world, since 1971. All fueled by the SECOND faucet of private sector fractional reserve banking, to which the FIRST faucet, the central bank FED money line, had delegated money creation responsibility and debt inundation tsunami. It fed the geometric interest gravy spiral as a result, feeding the banks and impoverishing the economy as a whole; with the current MEGA insurmountable structural imbalance resulting between first world debtors and BRIC/OIL creditor nations. Easy money, easy imports, no exports and deindustrialise first world as Ricardian logic dictated outsizing to slave labor Chindia!
That is the true conundrum after thirty years, especially if growth in first world economies is hampered by the ever rising fossil fuel price spike resuting from PEak Oil. All the easy oil is outside first world!
The denial is for people like you who dont spell out the WHOLE true picture; and the TBTF coterie that has created this first world mega mess who keep pointing to public sector imbalances THAT ORIGINATED DIRECTLY BY COWARDLY ACTIONS OF GOVERNMENTS WHEN THEY TARPED/QE'D/LTRO'D the banking sector debts, bringing it onto the public central bank balance sheets.
THAT IS THE SCAM AND THE TRUE DENIAL. NOT REALISING THIS IS UNSUSTAINABLE. So stop griping about public sector debt denial in Europe. Its a SMALL segment of the WHOLE first world ponzi shooting match. And it will burst one day, the sooner the better if the Europeans in their so called DENIAL shenanigans pull the plug on it!
Then the whole private sector scam curtain comes down...The real issue in the first world economy, is the financialised mayhem of Reaganomics/Pax Americana thirty year power play.
Now maybe we could discuss "misplaced values", once the false curtain of freeeeeee markets and freeeee men is no longer around to cloud our facts and our judgemental framework. This game is NOT over as the CITY and WS Moguls will fight in private sector DENIAL, to save their ENRON type mindsets to the very bitter end.
In other words, "FUCK THE POOR!"
You make points so clear that people turn away in fear. They do not want to think that what Marx called the Economic Superstructure was running on an oil-fired economic engine just as it once ran on a coal-fired engine up to the 1960s. Communism kept the West top-dog by holding half the world's population prisoner so it could sell raw materials cheap and build weapons systems and the West could use cheap resources to build its weapons systems and have Guns & Butter. Vietnam changed it by debasing the Dollar, flooding Asia with Dollars, and losing the Dollar-Gold Standard because US Voters would not accept high taxes to pay for Vietnam.
Up to the last 10 years or so the largest industrial population was in the USA - now it is moving towards China and India and US technology is simply being given away to Chinese factories. Long term they have given away the store.
Ireland had few problems until its corrupt government assumed Bank Debt largely for Offshore Lending. It did it because of being squeezed by London, Paris and Berlin. Ireland was a tax haven for SIVs run by London Banks and is part of the Offshore Daisy Chain. Dimwit Gordon Brown was conned into hauling the Offshore Debt of RBS and HBOS onto taxpayer books - so British taxpayers now insure loans to Russia, Australia, USA, Spain issued by Bankers running their books over Jersey and Dublin and Cayman to avoid UK taxes. Barclays has 132 Subs in Cayman.
Lovely business - Banks run deals to avoid taxes and then load taxes onto working stiffs to pay for their gambling debts.
My inconsolable sentiment is that the western world over 30 centuries created the greatest tradition of OPEN SYSTEM government; based on secular traditions which only have three simple rules to its methodolgy :
1° Logic
2° Primacy of Fact
3° Act and assume your free will, right or wrong, take corrective action as you go along based on 1° & 2°. Shared on the basis of delegated free will of individual to collective bodies, based on elective process. They act in our name; but based on institutions which exercise separation of powers, as explained below.
This is all western civilization is!
Secondly, this tradition has matured in a context whereby the Logic of Power (Alexander tradition) and the Logic of Progress/Reason (Aristotle Legacy) were independent. The only civilization known to man that has maintained over time this independence of the two logics to maintain BALANCE is our western civilization; whereby each logic is institutionalised and exercises counter power to the other logic. Every time the two swords have been held in the same hand it has led to Machiavellian disaster. This is the PRACTICAL factual lesson of history. Keep the Montesquieu legacy alive, the latest addition to Enlightenment tradition, the most precious of all, to have a counter power to the Caesars of this world. This is our most precious forward moving tradition. On the backward moving trend, keep dogmatic reasoning and "God wills it" out of the political debate. The past of our OPEN system logic has amply shown all Closed, creationist type logic may be appropriate to solve individual transcendant needs but IS not so to define the general good, as there are as many versions of GOD's word as there are men!
Today, in the mire of ONE SWORD Oligarchy; where Power and Finance; aka the economic wisdom of today in post-Marxian industrial construct, dominated by the financial monetarists, pseudo philosophers, we are now faced with OBSCURANTISM at a global level. The first of the two main dangers in the first world is NOT being able to see where the economic truth is. Where the political truth is. Where the ethical truth of general good therefore lies. As both swords in current first world western civilization are in lock step. We have to break this silent unsaid conspiracy, and refocus on where the basic balances of our society lie. We need clarification and the elected to be answerable for their acts. If we don't achieve this we have failed as a society. That's the first, the second is a reversion to despotic traditions, totally based on obscurantism.
Its not much to ask for in the light of a 3000 year tradition. Lets get that ball rolling. We owe this to our forefathers. Lets not fall back into the sugar traps of despotism or totalitarian rule based on Oligarchies, private or public. Caesar's rippling laughter over the centuries as sinister as those of our self created Gods of Olympus or elsewhere will then haunt us on every step we take. Unacceptable, profoundly so, to betray such a tradition.
We need to recoup fast as the world did in the 1930s. Our future is as dire as then.
You & Falak need to collaborate on a book; or an article; hell I'd settle for a joint sound-byte on teevee.
Excellent summary in 2 parts.
Now immortalised in my files to be printed up hauled out and slapped down on a table someday, in front of someone who (hopefully) just wants to know what is going on.
what EcoFlow said! Oh, and when the lights go out Mr Brusca... I'll still own something cause it's in my own hands... guess what that is? Hint: it's hard and shiny and very fun to play with (ha ha ha)
Germany in or out, that's there play. everyone else has got to print, it's the only way the playing fields are going to get closer to horizontal, yes it hurts those with deposits of what ever sort, but it's the only subtle way out. Either that or some type of debt forget, and that is falling off a cliff into the wild unknown
The level of return on German bunds makes no sense, if the market believes that Germany will be drawn even further into Eurozone liabilities.
The bund was at 140 yesterday – all time high. There are futures for June up to 155 available. This would make no sense, if Germany would remain in the Eurozone. If it would leave, the bund future would jump closer to 150
There is only one conclusion: Germany will leave the Eurozone until the summer.
>>>
...jump closer to 150
<<<
Not sure I agree.
I agree _if_ the future delivered DEM bunds (at a fair FX).
But if it just delivers EUR bunds, then credit quality same, but EUR interest rate probably higher, to compensate for the remaining ECB members printing like mad (no German board members to restrain them).
Watson
Yes!
This is an interesting observation.
It's why German bund yields got 'too low' and the bid-cover dried up a week ago. Even people (like me) who are sure that the euro-game is over realize that it is hard to figure out just how it will end.
For political reasons Germany cannot be the first one out. That makes the ongoing game of Euro musical chairs very interesting.
Watching the German bond market gives important clues.
B
Mr Brusca, to say the fixed currency prevents countries to fix their difference in competitiveness is completely wrong.
First, competitiveness, if you think to it as the size of current account surplus, is completely misleading ( I thought you were an economist...). You have to analyze more closely the country's economy for it.
Second, the current account imbalances, which are at the heart of the EZ crisis, can be solved despite the fixed currency. What allows a country to improve its current account balance through the time is the level of overall risk free adjusted interest rate regarding GDP nominal growth rate ( in fact these of investment more stricly speaking ).
For years these rates, while being roughly equals, were infact to low for peripheral countries ( due to high nominal growth ) and to high for Germany ( because of its negative population growth rate, its deleveraging household sector, and consecutive depressed domestic demand).
The fact that these rates were equal was decided by markets Mr Brusca, like they have decided now that they should not. This is the markets that went wrong at that time, maybe because they didn't understand the macro-economy in a fixed-echange rate world. And like them, Mr Brusca, you don't understand that this differences are reducing imbalances in current account, thus reducing the root cause of the EZ crisis.
In the long term, various sovereign rates across the EZ should reflect the respectif potential nominal growth of their national economies. This would then prevent the CA imbalances to pop again.
For instance, the US and UK economies are not close to solve their own. To me the crashing wall is more on their side of the road.
The root cause is that the PIFGIS are not competitive, this is why they have trade deficits and too much debt. They never grew up to play against China and yet what they prduce is more or less the same unsophisticated stuff.
Huh?
Second, the current account imbalances, which are at the heart of the EZ crisis, can be solved despite the fixed currency. What allows a country to improve its current account balance through the time is the level of overall risk free adjusted interest rate regarding GDP nominal growth rate ( in fact these of investment more stricly speaking ).
The classical BOP adjustment mechanisms are growth (more or less) and currency depreciation.
the balance of payments is about so much more than interest rates.
Sorry
You need to study more
What ??
"The classical BOP adjustment mechanisms are growth (more or less) and currency depreciation. "
BoP adjustment has nothing to do with growth !
BoP is made on one side by the current account which is roughly equal to Savings minus Investment.
The other side are net foreign direct investment, net flows in various financial investments, and changes in reserves.
The exchange rate here reacts at the level of coverage of the current account deficit by foreign investment, through the changes in reserves. It is the propency of foreigners to finance the CA deficit ( or to export capital as a counter part of the surplus ).
The current account represents the propency of domestic savings to cover the investment needs.
Growth can be high or low, it does not change anything to these relations. All depends of the propency of domestic savings to cover investment needs and the willing of foreigners to fill the gap.
Now let's talk about savings. Most of the savings generated inside an economy comes from debt repayment ( principal and interest rates ). They were originated through mortages, consumer credits, corporate credits and bonds, and sovereign bonds. The remaining part is mostly corporate earnings which at the end from a saving\investment view point plays the same role that the interest rate.
In a closed economy, if investment grows at 5% in nominal, overall ( risk free ) interest rate on borrowings must also be at 5%. If it was set lower, the savings flow generated by the repayment would be lower and a gap would be created with investment ( which we should not see in a closed economy).
In a world made of open economies, the gap translates into a current account deficit. The reduce it, savings have to increase relatively to investment, either through increase in savings or reduction in investment ( usually both ). The savings flow has more inertia than investment. So usually, putting a brake on economic growth strongly increases S relatively to I which translates into lower short term rates.
The BoP issue that face peripheral countries is the one of foreigners not willing to fill the gap anymore. The adjustment that has to take place is the one of reducing the need for foreign net financing, eg a reduction of the CA deficit. That is more savings vs investment, or put differently, lower growth and higher rates.Not higher growth and lower rates.
The fact that it is obviously unsolvable without a major paradigm shift, and the fact that the prevailing media wisdom does not acknowledge that reality, is why when things do come unglued it will be "sudden and without warning." Disasted is seldom without warning, it's just that people who warn of disaster are dismissed and considered fringe kooks.
"It is no wonder Europeans can’t find a solution." A solution to what, exactly? We had a solution after the war, the as-good-as-gold global reserve currency USD. Then came the Nixon Shock, something that was shocking for us, not for Americans.
Then we all had a nice fiat credit binge, and the first cracks appeared in the US mortgage market. suddently all debt was smelly. and your proposal is to break up the EUR so that all european countries can engage in several rounds of focussed and regional devaluations?
have you noticed that the ECB is engaging in a huge round of devaluation anyway? nicely tracking the USD? what do you need more?
Europe can keep throwing money at this. It is no more ridiculous than the shit going on stateside. That I personally think it should not is not the point. I am also reasoning that we need a new crisis to effect real change in financial regulations, which is a bigger problem in the world today. I'm sympathetic with the plight of those southerners who are paying the price almost with their lives, but we can design bandaids for that.
So in your future replies Bob, you can be a bit less paternalistic. What do you think of financial regulation Bob?
stateside is and has been reaping what they sow, ultimately this is about them not the EU despite its shadowing the US. Get yourself some Minsky, friend, six weeks and you're already full of patriarchial wisdom.
Minsky? Heard of him, read some interpretations. We could continue this off this thread.
Let me do this nice and slow.
What 'I' need is not the point.
What the euro-Zone needs is re-aligned competitiveness- the price levels across its various member states. Since they are all in the same euro (same currency) the ECB can't do it. With the LTRO the ECB is trying to keep at bay the tectonic force that are tearing EMU apart but this is dealing with symptoms only. Your reference to the ECB's policies misses the point. the misalignment is internal not external.
There is no mechanism to target price level changes country by country within the e-Zone. Yet policies there have allowed price level in the zone to go horribly out of alignment.
The problems are too great to solve with deflation.
A break up and resetting of parities is the ONLY solution.
Whatever else that entails is simply a knock-on effect. I do not defend it except to say it's the only solution.
Once the toothpaste is out of the tube it's too late to put it back in. Recriminations don't help. What's done is done.
EMU=TOAST
But its a political problem as well isnt it? The economists arent in charge of this project and never have been. You may be right but the politicos do not follow this level of refined analysis, an analysis which has been applicable from day one of the Europroject as far as I can see. And what with Francoise Hollande poised to take over in France, well, the printing to oblivion/equilibrium solution seems as alive as it ever was. Bottom line, politics always trumps economics. Apart from missing this dimension of the jigsaw this has been a good analysis again I think. Ciao bene!
Agreed. I will argue the point in my way, from my perspective. What I think irritates people is that in the end, you are an outsider. And we've had so many outsiders tell us what to do. The fact that we don't have enough of our own voices is really sad. But you may win some favour by focusing a bit more on your own backyard.
I can get and accept another point of view.
But rejecting a clear argument makes no sense. Disagree with me?
fine! great! Tell me why I am wrong instead of rejecting it or using some epithet (really top drawer), to showing ignorance.
I am willing to consider other points of view, if there is a basis for one.
If you find my argument wanting, attack IT not me?
Hey it's not that it bothers me because my ego is not in this. But we could actually get somewhere if we could build on an argument instead using refection and personal attacks
of the some 400 people who read this only a few provide posts and so so under assumed tags often using that device to enable outrageous behavior. I am not here for them.
they are welcome to their rants.
I said I agreed or did I not? Did I use an epithet? There are other things in this world that bother me besides the competitive problems of southern Europe. I take your post for what it is worth and I would like to see what else you have to offer us.
"...the very basis of the Zone, which is to defend the single currency..." no, the basis of the Zone is to defend the internal supply lines from trade and FX political shocks, be them resources or half-finished products.
and make sure that during currency/trade wars the Zone is sheltered from most of the storm. this is working, so far.
the very fact that so many banksters predict the demise of the EUR is a hint about how much churn/speculation could be generated by going back to sub-optimal small currencies.
we remember the times where everyone and his grandmother was long DM and short FF or ITL - no thanks
The minority of the populations want the Euro. If you do not have the people behind you you eventually fail.
do you have some backing to this claim? specific countries?
And I want to make some arguments along these lines too. The euro crisis is part of a bigger worldwide crisis. One of my professors used to say "War is economic peace and peace is economic war." You can take the war bit and say war will never again be economic peace, however peace has not stopped the economic war.
Dear Mr. Brusca, did you ever notice in your economy studies that devaluing a currency by let's say 20% is the same as slashing every paycheck of every worker of a currency zone by 20% if the currency zone is small?
You make no reference at all about all the studies on the "optimal size" of a currency zone. What is your solution to that problem?
Meanwhile by adopting your proposal we europeans could kiss our industry goodby and ship it to China, too. nice
It doesn't matter if that is what it does (and it does not do that). You apparently do not understand that a nation cannot increase its purchasing power by letting inflation rise.
The higher Greek, Spanish etc inflation since the Zone was formed actually raised purchasing power in Spain, Greece, etc. relative to Germany where inflation was lower and wages were more restrained. So they ( Spaniards, Greeks, etc) bought more German stuff. But the flip side of that coin is that Spain Greece etc. became less competitive. Those who got paid were 'better off' since their purchasing power for various imports was rising. But that was only because inflation rose and they were locked in a currency zone with Germany and others and that 'internal' exchange rate could not fall or be devalued to reflect the higher Spanish, Greek inflation). Others lost jobs and could not get hired because wages in these places were too high relative to productivity in comparison with elsewhere.
So because of that policy gaff (too high inflation) you would memorialize this disequilibrium thrust on the country? Why would you reward and defend a standard of living bought only by excessive inflation?
Do you have any idea what you are arguing for? Or do you just just think or have you been told 'by some who knows' that devaluation is 'bad?'
You have not one leg to stand on.
IF... IFFFF... currency values had not been set in the Zone the high inflation countries would have been experiencing currency depreciation steadily as a result of their high inflation rate. But that could not happen in the Zone. So the problems have been festering.
The Problem is that these countries have benefited from purchasing power far beyond what their own work ethic and productivity should have gotten them. Of course, they do not want to give it up. By it was obtained by illicit means (inflation).
A devaluation preserves all domestic price relationships but it makes foreign goods more expensive. It makes exporting more profitable (if your country has any exports). And that is because they SHOULD BE more expensive, unless you think you can inflate your way to prosperity.
I really don;t think you have through this through.
THE POINT IS the these countries have become uncompetitive by running higher inflation rates and that does not give their people a right to keep these higher nominal wages. All this occurred under the protection of a dysfunctional EMU.
Everyone is at fault.
THE ONLY medicine is devaluation whether you like it or not. Don't argue with me just THINK about it. Hold your response for juts a minute and think about what happens if there is no devaluation?
Know what happens?
Everything that is going wrong continues to go wrong and get worse.
So when/how would you fix it?
With Greece at a 30% competitiveness disadvantage to Germany (put another way with Greeks able to buy stuff form Germany with wages that are 30% TOO HIGH) what do you think happens?
Does any company invest in Greece to help it grow to make jobs to pay taxes... at a 30% disadvantage? Only an idiot would do that. So if Greece does not devalue how does it attract investment and get on its feet?
Devalue the currency and suddenly you can attract investment. Imports are more expensive so they slow. Market prices adjust and FORCE Greece, Spain etc to deal with their real problems.
THINK about it do not shoot the messenger.
This is not a doctrine. It is a logical argument. Disagree only IF you can show me why I am WRONG or what else could be a solution.
END
3. who is saying that "devaluations" are "bad in principle"? I am attacking your argument that they solve anything in the long run. And since you tie productivity with the work ethic - a morally and false view, I think, let me pose the argument in a different way, still tied to the "small region currency" argument: who told you that "Greece has a 30% competitiveness disadvantage vs Germany? Is there seriously a proof for this?
I know small regions in many european countries that are more competitive than many other regions in Germany. Your "let devalue a whole nation" principle is what we had before - and it became obviously not the right way, as we experienced.
Capital as I know it does not like devaluing regions, they are stressed and unstable. But of course when you talk about "the entrepreneurs" you specifically think about big biz like Nike and such that scour the whole world to find the cheapest labour for a quick exploitation that looks good on quarterly reports. That's not the model we are striving for. We prefer an organic, local growth of small/medium biz.
we had, at the beginning of the EUR project, the alternative idea of having every small region have it's own currency. and we encountered in the public discussions the problem of how to protect smaller currencies from both speculation and exploitation of labour by devaluations. Hence the "big one" that has it's foundation of "behaving like a gold standard", i.e. making a plain level, a rule applied to all.
2. my question was related to the optimum size of a currency zone. Come on, there are lots of important studies about that. you sure have read them...
1. LOL, again I realize that when I talk about competitiveness you - coming from academia with it's love for big biz - have a different definition and understanding from us - coming from the dirty and small end of the economy.
for us in the trade of producing, competitiveness starts with price calculation. the one that achieves the better, harder price calculation can make something better, faster and cheaper and get the prize of being competitive in the market. This is the reason why we hate having to make FX adjustments, hedges and building reserves for production and trade inside the EZ. it makes all price calculation softer. in hampers the trade. it disrupts any cost/price agreement.
we have little capital and it has to be employed optimally, paired with excellent and cherished labour that in the mix gives the optimum of quality and price.
for you, it's a game of "attracting capital" by making it "feel at home", the big game of big biz that our dear socialist politicians love so much. we don't see that much value adding by that, to be frank, too often the product is a white elephant...
You must be making commodity products to have margins that dissapear with a bit of currency fluctuations! If you are a German machine maker or a Dutch trader you just set your price in DEM or the local currency fixed to DEM and the customer pays you in DEM. On the purchase side things in the non DEM zone get cheaper form day to day. So where is the problem?
??? "a bit of currency fluctuations" ??? The CHF just devalued 10%.
A match of devaluations between ex-EUR would reach stupendous levels. We are reading how Mr. Brusca would "fix" the drachma by a devaluation of 30%, for starters.
And do you know how many parts of a BMW or an Airbus (just for very easy examples) are made all over the eurozone? And how many price calculations are behind them?
flag as fluid shitspray (1)
Dear Mr. Brusca, how did the world function during the gold standard age? For all purposes it was one huge currency zone, you know?
ye I know. You can read about it.
There were rigidities. There were crises.
When currencies CAN'T change it pushes adjustment into another realm. If EMU toughs it out (if I am wrong on the break-up)there will be at least a generation of deflation in Greece and nearly that in Spain. That is why I say that the Zone can't last because that won't happen.
When things got really bad under the gold standard often what happened was that countries would suspend convertibility.
The UK's big mistake after the war was going back to its pre-war parity which it's financial leaders saw as it's financial duty. But that level for Sterling was too high and it put tremendous deflationary pressure on the UK economy.
If the FX rates can't change pressures build up and manifest themselves in other ways.
B
"a generation of deflation"? A generation of mild deflation, for this I would subscribe immediately. Strong deflation, though, is, as far history tells me, short. Painful but short.
I agree with you here.
Germany should be first to leave the Euro; let France try and hang on.