Schadenfreude as Germany faces the collapse of its economic model

But with a democratic Europe in the balance, this is no time to gloat.

It is never easy to wake up to the news that your country’s business model is busted. It is difficult to acknowledge the obvious: that your political leaders had either been deluded or lying to you when they assured you for decades that your hard-earned living standards were safe. 

Greeks know this feeling. We experienced it in our bones in early 2010. Today, it is the Germans who are facing a wall of condescension, antipathy, and even mockery. 

The claim that the German model was compatible with Europe’s monetary union is also being exposed as false. Lacking a fiscal and a political union, the EU was always going to saddle Club Med governments, banks, and corporations with unpayable debts, which eventually would force the European Central Bank to choose between letting the euro die and embarking upon a permanent bankruptcy-concealment project.

Once upon a time, those of us who criticized the notion that every eurozone country should become like Germany objected that the German model worked only because no one else had adopted it. 

If you do not want to go back to the Deutsche Mark, you need a model embedded within a full-fledged, democratic European federation. 

Anything else will continue the Big Lie with which you are now painfully coming to terms.

Yanis Varoufakis Project Syndicate 26 July 2022

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/germany-needs-new-economic-model-by-yanis-varoufakis-2022-07

För att få en skymt av inblick i "det djupa EU" rekommenderar jag en krävande bok: "Adults in the Room" av Yanis Varoufakis. 

Dess knappt 500 sidor borde vara obligatorisk läsning, icke minst för alla oss som gillar EU-tanken.

Rolf Gustavsson

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2019/08/adults-in-room-my-battle-with-europes.html

Man la fram ett argument som man verkligen hade jobbat på och säkerställt att det är logiskt konsekvent, och du möts av ansikten med tomt stirrande blick. Som om du aldrig sagt något. Man hade lika gärna kunnat sjunga den svenska nationalsången – och fått samma svar.

Eurogruppen bestod av några otrevliga typer med mycket makt som stirrade på honom och sa: "Du har rätt i vad du säger, men vi kommer krossa dig ändå".

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2021/07/yanis-varoufakis-de-vagrade-agna-sig-at.html