Both Portugal and Greece used to “solve” (temporarily, of course) such problem when they had their own currencies by changing the interest rates to essentially inflate away the excess debt, something that they can’t do in the Euro.
In fact, if you look at for example the history of GDP Growth in Portugal, you see a huge increase in growth after the 1974 revolution (which replaced Fascism with Democracy), then another increase when the country joined the EU and then a steep decrease down to levels barely above those during Fascism when the Euro came to be.
Those countries gave away their control over their monetary policy and thus when push came to shove the big countries fucked them up spare large banks from those countries having to suffer the consequences of lending money at stupidly low interest rates to countries whose economies and economic and fiscal policies did not justify it.
Giving up on having a Central Bank has consequences, but none of them are relevant in the context of comparison with US states, as this thread started from, because they also all use the dollar and have the same central bank.
If I’m not mistaken, in the US there are money flows at the Federal level from the stronger economies to the weaker ones.
There is no such thing in the EU beyond the “structural funds” which countries with weaker economies receive when they join but which stop after a while (and which both Portugal and Greece wasted in roads and corruption).
So those two situations are not the same, they’re only partially similar.
Nah, that came from being hogtied by the Euro.
Both Portugal and Greece used to “solve” (temporarily, of course) such problem when they had their own currencies by changing the interest rates to essentially inflate away the excess debt, something that they can’t do in the Euro.
In fact, if you look at for example the history of GDP Growth in Portugal, you see a huge increase in growth after the 1974 revolution (which replaced Fascism with Democracy), then another increase when the country joined the EU and then a steep decrease down to levels barely above those during Fascism when the Euro came to be.
Those countries gave away their control over their monetary policy and thus when push came to shove the big countries fucked them up spare large banks from those countries having to suffer the consequences of lending money at stupidly low interest rates to countries whose economies and economic and fiscal policies did not justify it.
Giving up on having a Central Bank has consequences, but none of them are relevant in the context of comparison with US states, as this thread started from, because they also all use the dollar and have the same central bank.
If I’m not mistaken, in the US there are money flows at the Federal level from the stronger economies to the weaker ones.
There is no such thing in the EU beyond the “structural funds” which countries with weaker economies receive when they join but which stop after a while (and which both Portugal and Greece wasted in roads and corruption).
So those two situations are not the same, they’re only partially similar.