Sunday, September 29, 2024
Blog/Opinion

Euro Crisis De-coded

Imagine a ship named Euro, with an interior cavity divided into compartments of various sizes, one for each country of the Euro zone. The sizes of the compartments are proportional to the GDP of their country. Each compartment has also an inlet allowing seawater to come in, proportional to the deficit of its country. The ship has pumping facilities which can eliminate a water volume equivalent to say 3% of the total hold volume. The overall floatability of the ship is now in danger, since she is taking in more than twice the volume of water than she can pump away. The captain has given orders that every leak should be repaired to allow sea water to come in for no more than 3% of the compartments volume. Will he save his ship from sinking?
The euro crisis came to the fore in May, when possible Greek default led to fears of banking panic and state bankruptcy spreading to larger countries such as Spain. For quite some time, euro zone leaders appeared unable or unwilling to do anything. The Euro went on sliding, increasing nerves in markets about the possible outbreak.
Everything began in Greece; this small country was living beyond its means for years. A very little was produced and in turn little revenue generated. Instead of using the stability of Euro, Greece borrowed more and more. The crisis was aggravated by speculators pushing it in the undesirable direction.
The crisis could have hit the German banks already recovering from the financial meltdown. In order to rescue the European Union from possible financial paralysis, a massive stimulus package was injected into the system. The biggest contributor in the bail-out package was Germany who had its own vested interest more than, intent to safeguard the union. Apart from Greece whose potential for repayment of debt is highly debatable in spite of the restructured debt, other European economies such as Spain and Italy have lower level of government debt with well laid structural reforms. The current concerns about the EU are the worries that tough austerity measures across Europe could derail fragile global recovery.

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