Reflections on Greece – 1 – You can’t put money before a market

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The Greek economic crisis was not an unforeseeable event. It's happened because of a series of misjudgements.

Those misjudgements all have their origins in the Maastricht Treaty. All originate from the mantra of neoliberalism. And the failure of those ideas has led to the disaster for Greece, the Euro, our banks and our economies. That's not chance: that was inevitable.

The errors built logically one upon another - which is why to some degree they were not notice.  The first was to do with the Euro itself. You cannot impose a currency on a market. A market can support a currency, of course: that's because a currency is valued by debt created in market places. But there is only one direction of travel, which is from a market to a currency, and not vice versa.

There wasn't a single European market in 1992. Or a decade ago when the Euro finally got going. And there isn't a single European market now.

The result is obvious for all to see - the Euro is backed by debt of wildly differing value, created in differing markets and seeking redemption at different rates. And the Euro can't withstand that. But that was always going to be the case. Debt based money needs a common market to ensure consistent valuation. Europe does not have a common market. The currency was bound to fail.


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