"The recent European Union summit was a disaster. Both Britain and Germany played the wrong game: British Prime Minister David Cameron isolated Britain from Europe, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel isolated the eurozone from reality.
Had Cameron brought an economic-growth agenda to the summit, he would have been fighting for something real, and would not have lacked allies. As it was, he fully accepted Merkel’s austerity agenda – which his own government is implementing independently – and chose to veto proposals for a new European treaty to protect the City of London. This cheered up the Euroskeptics in Cameron’s Conservative Party, but it offered nothing to counter the lethal medicine prescribed by Germany’s Iron Lady.
The agreement reached in Brussels forecloses any possibility of Keynesian demand management to fight recession. “Structural” budget deficits would be limited to 0.5% of GDP, with (as yet undisclosed) penalties for violators.
This is the wrong cure for the eurozone crisis. The Merkel doctrine holds that the crisis is the result of government profligacy, so only a “hard” balanced-budget rule can prevent such crises from recurring.
But Merkel’s analysis is utterly wrong. It was not deficit spending by governments that fueled the economic collapse of 2007-2008, but excessive lending by banks. Government’s mounting debts have been a response to the economic downturn, not its cause. What ought to have been hard-wired into the EU’s institutional structure was not permanent fiscal austerity, but tough financial regulation. Of this there is little sign.
More immediately important is the failure of the proposed “fiscal union” to do anything for European recovery. The figures are grim: before the summit, the European Central Bank slashed its eurozone GDP growth forecast for 2012 from 1.3% to 0.3%. That is almost certainly optimistic. In fact, the eurozone will contract in the first half of next year – and probably in the second half, because of the deficit-cutting policies now being pursued – placing further pressure on banks and sovereigns..."
at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/skidelsky48/English
Had Cameron brought an economic-growth agenda to the summit, he would have been fighting for something real, and would not have lacked allies. As it was, he fully accepted Merkel’s austerity agenda – which his own government is implementing independently – and chose to veto proposals for a new European treaty to protect the City of London. This cheered up the Euroskeptics in Cameron’s Conservative Party, but it offered nothing to counter the lethal medicine prescribed by Germany’s Iron Lady.
The agreement reached in Brussels forecloses any possibility of Keynesian demand management to fight recession. “Structural” budget deficits would be limited to 0.5% of GDP, with (as yet undisclosed) penalties for violators.
This is the wrong cure for the eurozone crisis. The Merkel doctrine holds that the crisis is the result of government profligacy, so only a “hard” balanced-budget rule can prevent such crises from recurring.
But Merkel’s analysis is utterly wrong. It was not deficit spending by governments that fueled the economic collapse of 2007-2008, but excessive lending by banks. Government’s mounting debts have been a response to the economic downturn, not its cause. What ought to have been hard-wired into the EU’s institutional structure was not permanent fiscal austerity, but tough financial regulation. Of this there is little sign.
More immediately important is the failure of the proposed “fiscal union” to do anything for European recovery. The figures are grim: before the summit, the European Central Bank slashed its eurozone GDP growth forecast for 2012 from 1.3% to 0.3%. That is almost certainly optimistic. In fact, the eurozone will contract in the first half of next year – and probably in the second half, because of the deficit-cutting policies now being pursued – placing further pressure on banks and sovereigns..."
at http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/skidelsky48/English
