“WE HAVE an a-Greek-ment,” declared Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, on the morning of July 13th. Mr Tusk’s little joke seemed forgivable at the time: after talking through the night, euro-zone leaders had thrashed out a deal that averted Greece’s imminent exit from the single currency. The reality is grimmer. A decent deal would have put Greece on the path to sustainable growth and taken the prospect of Grexit off the table. Instead, Europe has cooked up the same old recipe of austerity and implausible assumptions. The IMF is supposed to be financing part of the bail-out. Even it thinks the deal makes no sense.
True, some ideas are useful. In exchange for talks on a package estimated at €82 billion-86 billion ($90 billion-94 billion), the creditors have put structural reforms higher up the agenda than in the two previous bail-outs. That is welcome: opening closed-shop industries to competition is a surer path to growth than austerity is. But even if they are carried out, structural reforms take a long time to pay off. In the meantime, the Greek economy is suffocating because of bank closures and capital controls. The...
from The Economist: Leaders http://ift.tt/1I5UZNi
No comments:
Post a Comment