While not quite MMT, this post by Paul de Grauwe in Roubini Europe Economonitor is getting there. Paul de Grauwe understands the inherent flaws of the eurozone architecture, but he fails in creative inspiration in his proposal to fix it. Only political Union is offered. What about an ECB per capita distribution of euro or a funded job guarantee?
Managing a Fragile Eurozone
May 10, 2011 12:23PM
Why does the Spanish government pay significantly more to borrow than the UK government – despite having a smaller deficit and lower overall debt? This column argues that the reason lies in the Eurozone’s fragility. Its members lose their ability to issue debt in a currency over which they have full control. The column discusses ways to deal with this weakness.
…..A monetary union creates collective problems. When one government faces a debt crisis this is likely to lead to major financial repercussions in other member countries (see Arezki, et al. 2011 for evidence). This is so because a monetary union leads to intense financial integration. The externalities inherent in a monetary union lead to the need for collective action, in the form of a European Monetary Fund (Gros and Mayer 2010). This idea has been implemented when the European Financial Stability Facility was instituted (which will obtain a permanent character in 2013 when it is transformed into the European Stability Mechanism). Surely, when providing mutual financial assistance, it is important to create the right incentives for governments so as to avoid moral hazard. Discipline by the threat of punishment is part of such an incentive scheme. However, too much importance has been given to punishment and not enough to assistance in the new design of financial assistance in the Eurozone.
This excessive emphasis on punishment is also responsible for a refusal to introduce new institutions that will protect member countries from the vagaries of financial markets that can trap countries into a debt crisis and a bad equilibrium. One such an institution is the collective issue of government bonds (for recent proposals see Delpla and von Weizsäcker 2010, De Grauwe and Moesen 2009 and Juncker and Tremonti 2010). Such a common bond issue makes it possible to solve the coordination failure that arises when markets in a self-fulfilling way guide countries to a bad equilibrium. It is equivalent to setting up a collective defence system against the vagaries of euphoria and fears that regularly grip financial markets, and have the effect of leading to centrifugal forces in a monetary union.
A monetary union can only function if there is a collective mechanism of mutual support and control. Such a collective mechanism exists in a political union. In the absence of a political union, the member countries of the Eurozone are condemned to fill in the necessary pieces of such a collective mechanism. The debt crisis has made it possible to fill in a few of these pieces. What has been achieved, however, is still far from sufficient to guarantee the survival of the Eurozone.
mer O’Siochru is a qualified architect and valuation surveyor. She was a founder of Feasta and served on its executive committee for many years. She is director of EOS Future Design which designs and develops sustainable systems and settlements. She also manages the Feasta-led Smart Tax Network which is funded by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to develop tax policies in areas related to the environment. She lives in Dublin.
