Fact Checking
Well-Known Member
Every serious economist said that the "balanced budget" and "no free money from the central bank" rules of the Eurozone treaties -- DEMANDED BY GERMANY -- would cause massive unemployment. Which they did.
Yeah - and the introduction of the "Euro gold standard" in 2000 basically repeated economic history: it repeated the boom/bust cycles of growth followed by depressions that the U.S. suffered from every ~10 years.
A little known historic fact is how stable today's modern economies are and how mild our recessions are, comparatively: in the 1800's and early 1900's there were multiple "Great Depressions" in the U.S. before the last, biggest one in 1929-1933, triggering depressions almost like clockwork:
- Panic of 1873 - Wikipedia
- Panic of 1884 - Wikipedia
- Baring crisis - Wikipedia
- Panic of 1893 - Wikipedia
- Panic of 1896 - Wikipedia
- Panic of 1907 - Wikipedia
- Depression of 1920–21 - Wikipedia
This is what I tried to point out in my argument to @avoigt: there's nothing surprising about the Eurozone outcome - it's literally a textbook outcome of the flawed economic rules of the Eurozone.
But there's a remarkable ignorance in the German press regarding these economic arguments - these arguments get very little airtime and almost always get turned into a false 'Germany vs. Greece', "Ants vs. Grasshopper" morality play about debtors living beyond their means, cheating on taxes and not balancing their budgets. (Which is true in the case of Greece which did all of that and more, but misses the point.)
If we want to talk countries the real story is not Greece but Spain who (unlike Germany) had a budget surplus before the Euro crisis hit, yet suffered an almost as bad fate as Greece...
Bad assumptions and flawed logic are not limited to the ICE manufacturing industry!
And no, I'm not picking on Germany with an U.S.-centric view or bias: the German education and health care system is exemplary compared to the U.S., and the role of money in politics much better regulated, the use of green energy is much more advanced than in the U.S. and the public transportation network is phenomenal.
(Nor would I have a U.S.-centric viewpoint being a European myself. )
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