Ilargi Meijer, Ρ. (2014) “Debt Rattle Oct 1 2014: Europe Is Crumbling Into Collapse“, The Automatic Earth, 01 October.
For me, the quote of the day is this one: “If there’s a periphery of the eurozone’s periphery, that’s Naples.”. The city of Napoli hosts ECB boss Mario Draghi and the heads of Europe’s central banks this week in some very posh former Bourbon family royal palace, and the contradictions involved couldn’t be more striking.
Napoli is home to an immense amount of poverty and misery, and the advent of the EU and the euro has done absolutely nothing to make life in the city any better. Quite the contrary. And there’s not a single thing in sight that holds any promise of alleviating the deepening Italian downfall. Therefore things can, and will, only get worse from here.
And that’s not just true for Italy, or Napoli. It’s true for all of Europe. That is not because Mario Draghi hasn’t spent enough money, or too much of it, or that he’s spent it in the wrong places. It’s because Napels is not Berlin or Frankfurt, or even Milan in the much richer north of Italy. And because Italy is not Germany, and Greece is not Finland, and trying to force all of them into one and the same economic mold can only possibly end in the poor getting poorer.
Unless there would be a massive wealth transfer from rich to poor, from north to south, but that’s never been in the cards. The intention was always to make the EU a tide to lift all boats, or even, in the wildest dreams, a boat to lift all tides. That intention has failed in dramatic fashion. But not one single one of the architects and present day leaders is ready to fess up to their failures.
Almost 15 years after the euro was introduced, the battlefields are littered with dead and wounded bodies. And the only answer that comes from Brussels is to strengthen the – financial and political – army. The only answer that comes from Brussels is that Europe, including Italy, Greece, Spain, needs more Brussels, more centralized control.
And Napoli is not the only place that can lay claim to the title “periphery of the eurozone’s periphery”. Spain and Greece have unemployment numbers just like Napoli, only for them it’s in their entire countries. All have had youth unemployment at well over 50% for years now, a sort of real life version of throwing your babies away with the bathwater. And all have regions and cities where things are much worse still.
Relevant posts:
- Koo, R. (2014) “Fixing the Eurozone“, The European Magazine, 03 September.
- Szczurek, M. (2014) “Investing for Europe’s Future“, VoxEU Organisation, 05 September.
- Davies, H. (2014) “Europe’s Fitful Financial Integration“, Project Syndicate, 25 August.