"As markets plunge again today, ostensibly on existential worries about the
eurozone, you might want a plain-English explanation of what the root of the
problem is. And John
Lanchester is a great place to turn for such things:
On 16 August, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel had an emergency meeting to decide what to do about the Eurozone crisis. After it, they gave a press conference at which they spoke in platitudes about the need for Europe to improve its ‘economic governance’, avoiding all specifics. They precisely and explicitly ruled out the only two things which would have helped: the creation of ‘eurobonds’, i.e. debts backed by the full economic weight of all the countries inside the eurozone; and the extension of the €440 billion European Financial Stability Facility. It’s easy to see why they did this, and their reasons are entirely to do with the domestic unpopularity of giving more aid to the indebted and severely struggling ‘Club Med’ countries of Southern Europe. Unfortunately, Merkel and Sarkozy’s inaction is a recipe for certain disaster. Everybody and his cat knows that the eurobond is the only way out of the crisis for the eurozone in the medium term; as for the necessary size of the short-term bailout facility, Gordon Brown’s guesstimate was €2 trillion. That ‘could have convinced the markets that Europe meant business’. Huge, sustained and manifestly undeflectable government intervention on that scale is the only thing which will cause the speculators and hedge-funders and ‘hot money’ types to back off. Instead, nothing..."at http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/09/06/europes-lethal-uncertainty/
