The data run through July except for Greece where they only go through June.
Spain and Greece have continued to worsen, while nowhere on the periphery is improving yet. There are very serious protests in at least Spain, Greece, and Portugal. The European crisis remains very much unsolved.
I have long been skeptical that the European Monetary Union would be able to hang together.
ReplyDeleteIn particular, with Spain, Italy, France and Germany each providing approx 25% of the funding to the ESM ... the math on this just did not seem to me to add up. How can Spain and Italy collectively pay for half of their own bailout???
Now the math on the ESM is looking even more suspect because France's fiscal situation is looking less and less tenable:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9577674/Another-domino-falls-as-Hollande-pushes-France-into-depression.html
They should just get it over with and break up the EMU. It is going to happen anyway and prolonging it just imposes needless additional suffering on millions of people.
The European crisis remains very much unsolved, but the unemployment rate in these countries has been much higher in the past, before the Euro area was formed. If the PIIGS had their own currencies, perhaps their unemployment rates would be much higher, as it was in the past.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, back in the 1980's, the Irish unemployment rate was 18% and youth unemployement was over 30%. Things are bad, but not worse than the past!
The Euro area is not going to break up anytime soon. Greece proves this point: they have undergone one debt restructuring and will probably go through another, but it does not mean they have too leave the Euro area to do it. Also, the Greek people don't want to go back to the bad old days of the drachma, in the same way the Irish do not want to rejoin to the Sterling area.