The Cypriot “solution” is a game changer. I teach my students that the euro is a freely convertible currency and that in the common European market capital is allowed to move freely. However, both of these concepts have ceased to apply in Cyprus, for the present at least. I told my students that the eurozone has set up the European…
Three years after Greece signed the EU-IMF memorandum, some questions remain. Here are some answers: 1. Could Greece have avoided the memorandum? Clearly not, given the state of its economy in late 2009 / early 2010. The economies of all the countries that signed up to a memorandum after Athens did (Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus) were in better shape than Greece’s…
The current Greek debate over Europe is inescapably related to its traumatic experience at the epicentre of the crisis. Since 2010 the country has had to deal with sky-high interest rates, severe recession, harsh austerity, structural reform, and the indignity of emergency injections of cash to keep it solvent. Many Greeks, who had seen membership of the EU as a…