Eurozoneremarks (EZR) opinion: E-Book: How the West avoided going bust

Dear reader,

the title of course a reference to the magnificent BBC documentary
The Party's Over: How the West Went Bust Episode 1 & Episode 2
by BBC business editor Robert Peston.
Along with a more recent masterpiece: The Great Euro Crash with Robert Peston plus this one: Michael Portillo's Great Euro Crisis
an absolute 'must see', since they not only ask many questions what went wrong to those people who should know it, but also gives some of the answers what could be done to avoid a systematic collapse. Of course from a British perspective but a view from the sidelines of the playing field called the eurozone is perhaps not a bad vantage point upon the crisis of the eurozone which has some potential to severely harm the economy of the UK as well.

'How the West went bust' is of course both: a bit gloomy and a retrospective look from the future on what went wrong in the past. The past is of course our present time and our immediate future and so the gloomy title can actually help to understand that the future could indeed deliver some very bitter pills to our western European society as a whole. On the other hand citing a famous quote it is also true that 'The future isn't written' as Thomas Edward Lawrence once replied to his Arab counterpart, Sherif Ali who, until he encountered the will & determination of Lawrence, believed that mankind has to accept fate, which is always at the mercy of Allah. T.E. Lawrence if of course better known to present generations as 'Lawrence of Arabia'.

And there are more present suggestions that 'the future is written' which are expressed as the euro area is facing 'a train crash in slow motion' as expressed by professor Nouriel Roubini, also known as 'Dr. Doom'. The title assigned to him by people who don't want to see that his analysis and his predictions are rather describing the in fact miserable economic circumstances. Whereas those who see him as 'Dr. Doom' are rather overly optimistic or even blinded by faith that everything is just working fine. In contrast to the Arabic counterpart of Mr Lawrence it can be assumed that Mr Roubini doesn't like the predicted outcome either and is therefore rather giving a realistic picture in oder to prevent things from actually crashing. Just as Mr Krugman as the author here is convinced that labeling him as "anti-euro" or even being against Europe or European Union as whole is actually too far fetched and is utterly unjustified. As Mr Roubini or others who warn about looming, possibly hidden dangers those who are considered to be 'Cassandra' are in fact driven by the wish to prevent disasters not inflicting those.

Coming back to the point of 'prevention', it is worth to say that there is an intention of this author to rise the level of awareness, to inform as detailed as possible by presenting a compilation of links to describe the ongoing process of 'looming train crash', but also give some ideas what could be done to avoid it. The initial website was therefore split in three individual parts: One continue to give as neutral and as detailed information on events taking place in the euro area, one serving as background for being linked to in blog entries of information and the opinion section, which is the third part. The exact number of links wasn't counted but must go in the hundreds. And although the web blogging service offered by blogger.com is close to perfection, it is however difficult to see a complete 'picture' of what knowledge is already being stored on those 3 separate sections of the project 'Remarks on the eurozone'. There is already enough material to fill a book.

Just to give the readership interested in a 'big picture' all of the already published content will be presented here, divided in chapters and some of the material which is still not being published because it is part of longer pieces, will be cut into smaller pieces and links will also be available here under "the book". As it is still a very fragile situation and things are developing rather fast, there will be of course constant updates within the chapters. Just don't see as a conventional book but more like a link collection, divided into chapters. Nevertheless there are also some blog entries which are still 'draft' but which contain important external links and some potentially useful additional information by the author.
Some blog entries contain links which are also listed in this 'global list' so it's possible to find a blog entry more than once.

Please keep in mind that the author here has no commercial intentions and this is a project not intended to win a literature prize but instead it's all about economics and facts. So please be forgive the many mistakes in the texts because due to lack of time there wasn't much time spent on rereading and editing. (reading articles, collecting and selecting data is time consuming enough)
Please do also keep in mind that in November/December 2011 the euro area was on the brink of collapsing and the author here was also very worried about what is going to happen, while our politicians were still not reacting to the crisis as they should do. So in those days of severe stress the analysis was not as 'neutral' as it should have been.

The author here also pleas for forgiveness for any potential harm felt by individuals or countries. It was never intended to insult anyone or any country but the goal is to give honest analysis in order to inspire others to overcome any problems of the past which are addressed. Please remember that it's not recommended for doctors to spare their patients any thorough diagnosis even when the patient has to suffer from psychological shock when hearing that he suffers from potentially lethal cancer. So of course there is much to criticize about those states which obviously failed, but it is also worth noting that even those countries seen in general as 'the headmasters of euro area' have been under scrutiny here and there is some embarrassing judgment for those too.

The main reason for publishing the 'book structure' however are the latest dire warnings that there isn't really much time left to get it finally right. The LTRO injections by ECB aren't enough anymore and once again it becomes obvious that politicians didn't use the time offered or bought by the ECB to fix the main problems. There are several severe 'hurricane warnings' for the deteriorating, potentially catastrophic conditions in the euro area not only this one by George Soros:
Remarks at the Festival of Economics, Trento Italy
In the coming days there will be another compiled list of other warnings added to chapter 9. (The author is only human ;-))

By offering a complete structure of all three individual blogs maybe the one or the other will be able to access some useful information more easily than by scrolling through the archive pages.

Chapter zero - History

Speech Helmut Schmidt SPD at party convention on Dec. 4th 2011 part one (2011/12/07)
Speech Helmut Schmidt SPD at party convention on Dec. 4th 2011 part two (2011/12/07)
The forgotten catastrophe ... Deflation (2011/12/03)

Chapter I - The beginning of the common currency

Going back in time to the 1990s in order to show what was the intention, what was the goal of the people involved in the process of creating the EMU.
They (euro creators) should have asked Paul de Grauwe (2012/05/18)
The good old times (1990s) The way to the monetary union (2011/11/01)
Euro cash: 10th anniversary (2011/12/31)
The takeover of monetary policy by politicians (draft) (2011/10/30)

Chapter II - What went/goes wrong

This chapter is about what led us to to point of complete failure. What are the root causes for the euro area turning sour.
There is the 'idiocy series' which is started in May 2012, but some earlier pieces on rather stupid developments all contributing to the demise of euro area are listed under this chapter too. The series was called 'Worry about idiocy not inflation' (part #number)' because so far the ECB handled inflation in the eurozone pretty well but nevertheless we almost reached the end of the road. Just to show that inflation is one very important condition to watch/control but there are others as well.

Germany able to reduce its debt by miracle (2011/10/30)
The aftermath of the great euro summit (2011/10/30)
Goooooood mooooorning Merkonti (2012/12/07)

Blogging isn't the only thing Europeans can't do (2012/03/30)

The vantage point of the frog (2012/03/20)

European political euphemisms, BS exposed (2012/03/07)

Kindergarten for adults (2012/01/14)

Open letter to German opposition leader Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) - german (2012/05/10)

Worry about idiocy not inflation (part I) Introduction (2012/05/08)

Worry about idiocy not inflation (part II) German austerity myth (2012/05/08)

Worry about idiocy not inflation (part 4) - Helping Greek bureaucrats not businesses (2012/05/23)

Worry about idiocy not inflation (part 5) Undetected systemic risk - Humans (2012/05/31)