Syriza and the French indemnity of 1871-73 | Michael Pettis' CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS - 0 views
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Fundamental to the argument that Spain (or Greece, or anyone else) has a moral obligation to repay in full its debt to Germany are two assumptions. The first assumption is that “Spain” borrowed the money from “Germany”, and that there is a collective obligation on the part of Spain to repay the German collective. The second assumption is that Spain had a choice in what it could do with the German money that poured into the country, and so it must be held responsible for its having mis-used hard-earned german funds.
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There was plenty of irresponsible behavior in every country, and it is absurd to think that if German and Spanish banks were pouring nearly unlimited amounts of money into countries at extremely low or even negative real interest rates, especially once these initial inflows had set off stock market and real estate booms, that there was any chance that these countries would not respond in the way every country in history, including Germany in the 1870s and in the 1920s, had responded under similar conditions.
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The winners have been banks, owners of assets, and business owners, mainly in Germany, whose profits were much higher during the last decade than they could possibly have been otherwise
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Second, it is the responsibility of the leading centrist parties to recognize the options explicitly. If they do not, extremist parties either of the right or the left will take control of the debate, and convert what is a conflict between different economic sectors into a nationalist conflict or a class conflict. If the former win, it will spell the end of the grand European experiment.
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First, as long as Spain suffers from its current debt burden, it does not matter how intelligently and forcefully it implements economic reforms. It will not be able to grow out of its debt burden and must choose between two paths
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Most currency and sovereign debt crises in modern history ultimately represent a conflict over how the costs are to be assigned among two different groups