David McWilliams, Gabor Steingart, Joseph Stiglitz, Simon Wolfson and Stephanie Flanders. 2011 European Zeitgeist.
The Eurozone is suffering a crisis of confidence, with many questioning the future of the Euro and the EU alliance itself. Stephanie Flanders engages economic experts on both sides of the European debate. Can we afford to prop up the Euro? Is this just a financial crisis, or does it reflect broader challenges in bringing diverse nations together?
See more information about Zeitgeist here.
I think Ireland has a unqiue perspective about the Euro that’s different from mainland Europe. As an Island, we need to get a flight or ferry to get to other countries. I live in Munich right now and can easily get a train or bus to Austria in an hour to go skiing or hiking. It doesn’t feel like you’ve even crossed a border, so economic issues aside, there’s a huge everyday practicality for the euro that is often discounted in economic discourse.
You don’t want to change currencies every time you go for a short drive.
posted this last article, might be more appropriate here: @CitizenWhy, Re “do not know why Ireland, along with Britain, does not seek to join a Scandinavian Union rather than the EU, with each country retaining its own currency.” I don’t know whether the Scandinavian countries would be interested, but we certainly should. The Brits were right about Europe, it has fundamental flaws that helped bankrupt us. The experiment was tried and failed, time to move on. I presume you would see it operating along the lines of the British Commonwealth of Nations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations Thanks Malcolm re link to DmcW Zeitgeist… Read more »
Lord Blankfeins little friend Gabor strikes me as a vindictive little shit.
David , you should have emphasized that if they want their money back we need to remain a tax haven.
They cannot suck blood out of turnip fields.
I personally would be happy ditching our corporate experiment if we got these debt pimps off our backs.
I know your view is that we should remain in such exalted company but the only union I would be interested in now after listening to such creatures is with a Icelandic woman.
Its time to leave me thinks.
It was an interesting discussion. However, whilst discussing the solution to the problem there was no actual nailing of what is the real problem. No real point in discoursing my perspective of the real problem (fractional reserve banking does not work it compounds debt to the point the burden is to great for the revenue generation capacity of any economy). The US believes in buying their way out of an economic crisis and will endeavour to further cement their financial alliace to China to reinforce the ChinAmerican economic entity protecting the dollar as the premium trading currency. The Germans believe… Read more »
Wolfson is making a point that everybody who has endured the nonsense coming from Brussels is about to awaken to. But he does this in a very clear, though understated manner. Basically, it was all a bit far-fetched to begin with. And he is acknowledging this. Eventually, there will be only one solution available – print, baby print. They will print the currency for the PIGIS. And the PIGIS, through their inept and often corrupt local elites will return the money to the bankers. And then it is finished, the Germans, the Dutch, the Scandinavians, and those who are responsible… Read more »
What an excellent discussion! In my opinion, you brained them, David. Loved the apposite Protestant v. Catholic division into sinners and lenders. The fallacy there of course is that the (inferential) saints, the lenders, failed all their risk management tests, so who are the REAL sinners? :) And Joe Stiglitz was wrong that no country should try to do its own thing on taxation. So Ireland MUST increase its company tax because tax competition’s a bad thing? Oh? What other sort of competition is bad, Joe, and what else must Ireland do? I thought you were a land tax advocate,… Read more »
I would have loved to see the whole discussion, I suppose this is just an excerpt, hence I find it very difficult to contribute plausible commentary. But two impressions I want to share. 1. What the heck is so funny? Again, it is just an impression, but what struck me at first was the atmosphere in the panel. Forgive me, but the giggles and laughter were neither coming from a panel that just is enjoying themselves nor was this the laughter of nervousity because some high profile people were in the audience that knew what questions to ask. All the… Read more »
It angered me to listen to the panel attacking the Irish position on taxation. “Tax Poaching” is no way to run an economy and it failed. Another argument would be that Ireland never imposed military might on other nations in a bid to enforce her financial supremacy.
I shudder when I hear the German panelist telling the world how we must educate the so called lesser states.
Not communism, but a re-emerging fascism.
Comparisons with The US are not valid as congress would never sanction austerity measures on 3 or 4 states alone without being held politically accountable.
It is astonishing how little commentary on this clip appeared. Compared to other articles on this blog next to nothing.
Then again, perhaps it is not!
[…] can watch the panel discussion mentioned above on the future of the euro here. tweetmeme_url = […]
Just watched this again. I think many of you need to re-examine your reasoning. Stiglitz is 100% right to have a go at our corporation tax rate as a strategy for growth. If one requires evidence that he is correct just look at Ireland. Our corporation tax may have attracted plenty of high value companies but where is the Irish IBM, Google, ARM? You can get some quick wins but you don’t create a sustainable economy based on low taxation alone, at some point you need also to create stuff (or services, ideas) people want to buy. The multinationals that… Read more »