Living in Terror of Dead Economists

Kenneth Rogoff has a piece on the Project Syndicate that is revealing of today’s intellectual climate. What does he say?

1. The eurozone problems are structural, and stem from a monetary and economic integration that was not followed (I’d say accompanied) by fiscal integration (a federal budget to be clear). Hard to disagree on that
2. Without massive debt write-downs, no reasonable solution to the current mess seems feasible. Hard to disagree on that as well
3. Some more inflation would be desirable, to bring down the value of debt. Hard to disagree on that as well.

In a sentence, intra eurozone imbalances are the source of the current crisis. Could not agree more…

Unfortunately, Rogoff does not stop here, but feels the irrepressible urge to add that

Temporary Keynesian demand measures may help to sustain short-run internal growth, but they will not solve France’s long-run competitiveness problems [...] To my mind, using Germany’s balance sheet to help its neighbors directly is far more likely to work than is the presumed “trickle-down” effect of a German-led fiscal expansion. This, unfortunately, is what has been lost in the debate about Europe of late: However loud and aggressive the anti-austerity movement becomes, there still will be no simple Keynesian cure for the single currency’s debt and growth woes.

The question then arises. Who ever thought that a more expansionary stance in the eurozone would solve the French structural problems? And at the opposite, why would recognizing that France has structural problems make it less urgent to reverse the pro-cyclical fiscal stance of an eurozone that is desperately lacking domestic demand? Let me try to sort out things here. This is the way I see it:

1. European woes have deep sources. Institutional developments have led to a suboptimal currency area that endogenously created imbalances; as of today only extreme solutions seem to offer a durable solution: Either we cross the ford towards a fully fledged federal entity, with a federal budget (the United States of Europe, just to be adamant); or we go back where we were a few years ago: a common market, in which each country retains its own monetary and fiscal sovereignty (we could call it the British View).
2. The eurozone structural problems made it fragile, and the crisis exposed them.
3. Disastrous management, and widespread adherence to the Berlin View have imposed harsh austerity to the periphery and to the core alike, worsening the textbook Keynesian demand slump.
4. There is little hope that the aggregate fiscal stance in the eurozone turn positive (thus fighting the recession), if core countries do not make a u-turn in their fiscal policies

read more