Sunday, May 5, 2013

Teenage Mutant Ninja PIGS

I've been wondering why we haven't seen more coordination between the governments of the troubled high-unemployment economies on the periphery of the Eurozone. What I'm thinking about is Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain all getting together and coming up with a general proposal for looser money or other economic stimulus in the Eurozone, with the implicit threat that if they don't get what they want, they'll all leave. (And join the Yen! If you haven't heard, they're turning it into Beef!)

If all of them can get behind a proposal, that would give it a kind of credibility that individual ultimata might not have. I'm not sure how much bigger a threat they all pose coming together, because a lot of people are worried when the Greece issue comes up that they'd better deal with it or it's the beginning of everybody leaving, which suggests that Greece is wielding a pretty big threat even without buy-in from the others. And I'm guessing that it would look impressive to a domestic audience, as it's a pretty clear sign that you're doing something. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A few years ago, my thinking was that the chaos of leaving the euro would be even worse than the pain of staying.

But as year after year of ~25% unemployment continues in some of these countries, I have to ask: worse, how??