Does Europe Really Need Fiscal and Political Union?

This is one of the interesting revelations in Varoufakis’s fascinating account of his tenure as finance minister.

“You are probably the one [in the Eurogroup] who understands that the eurozone is unsustainable,” Varoufakis quotes Schäuble as telling him.

“The eurozone is constructed wrongly. We should have a political union, there is no doubt about it.”

But there is also an alternative, much less ambitious view, according to which neither fiscal nor political union is needed.

What needs to be done instead is to de-link private finance from public finance, insulating each from the malfeasance of the other.

Englund