Quote Of the day

Mark Weisbrot, a co-Director of the Center for Economic Policy Research, recently took to task the United States and the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB), and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The United States is the key member of the IMF and is thus responsible for its actions. Weisbrot criticized them because “They were trying to force the Greek parliament to adopt measures that would further shrink the Greek economy and therefore make both their economic situation and their debt problem worse, while inflicting more pain on the Greek electorate.” But it is not just the Greek economy which is in crisis. “The threat from the Troika,” Weisbrot argued, “was putting the whole European financial system at risk, since it raised the prospect of a chaotic, unilateral Greek default.”

What we are seeing here, then, is a triumph of ideology and interest over reason and solidarity.

Weisbrot drew an obvious conclusion from his analysis:

The “European debt crisis” is misnamed; it is not so much a debt crisis as a crisis of policy failure. There are always alternatives to a decade without growth, trillions of dollars of lost output, and millions of unemployed that the European authorities are offering to the people of Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Greece and now Italy. All that is lacking is the political will and competence to change course.