{"id":6424,"date":"2015-03-11T06:15:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-11T11:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6424"},"modified":"2015-03-11T06:15:05","modified_gmt":"2015-03-11T11:15:05","slug":"thomas-piketty-on-the-euro-zone-we-have-created-a-monster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=6424","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Piketty on the Euro Zone: ‘We Have Created a Monster’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Piketty on the Euro Zone:<\/span>\u00a0‘We Have Created a Monster’<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n

SPIEGEL:<\/b>\u00a0You publicly rejoiced over Alexis Tsipras’ election victory in Greece. What do you think the chances are that the\u00a0European Union<\/a>\u00a0and Athens will agree on a path to resolve the crisis?<\/p>\n

Piketty:<\/b>\u00a0The way Europe behaved in the crisis was nothing short of disastrous. Five years ago, the United States and Europe had approximately the same unemployment rate and level of public debt. But now, five years later, it’s a different story: Unemployment has exploded here in Europe, while it has declined in the United States. Our economic output remains below the 2007 level. It has declined by up to 10 percent in Spain and Italy, and by 25 percent in Greece.<\/span><\/p>\n

SPIEGEL:<\/b>\u00a0The new leftist government in Athens hasn’t exactly gotten off to an impressive start. Do you seriously believe that\u00a0Prime Minister Tsipras<\/a>\u00a0can revive the Greek economy?<\/p>\n

Piketty:<\/b>\u00a0Greece alone won’t be able to do anything. It has to come from France, Germany and Brussels. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) already admitted three years ago thatthe austerity policies<\/a>\u00a0had been taken too far. The fact that the affected countries were forced to reduce their deficit in much too short a time had a terrible impact on growth. We Europeans, poorly organized as we are, have used our impenetrable political instruments to turn the financial crisis, which began in the United States, into a debt crisis. This has tragically turned into a crisis of confidence across Europe.<\/p>\n

SPIEGEL:<\/b>\u00a0European governments have tried to avert the crisis by implementing numerous reforms. What\u00a0do mean when you refer to impenetrable political instruments?<\/span><\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Piketty on the Euro Zone:\u00a0‘We Have Created a Monster’ SPIEGEL:\u00a0You publicly rejoiced over Alexis Tsipras’ election victory in Greece. What do you think the chances are that the\u00a0European Union\u00a0and Athens will agree on a path to resolve the crisis? Piketty:\u00a0The way Europe behaved in the crisis was nothing short of disastrous. Five years ago, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[195,4106,279,281,284,285,418,434,3053,3283],"class_list":["post-6424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-debt","tag-debt-crisis","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european-union","tag-eurozone","tag-imf","tag-international-monetary-fund","tag-public-debt","tag-thomas-piketty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6425,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6424\/revisions\/6425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}