Eurozone crisis

These Yankees playing at Cassandras

Published on 9 August 2012 at 13:10

"Will the monetary union survive?" asks the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) following a week full of clashing opinions on the future of the eurozone. To guide them through the jungle of declarations, the conservative daily has published an interactive map that illustrates the distribution of euro-optimists (in green) and euro-pessimists (in red). The conclusion –

Most of the prophets of doom are from America. Europeans see the crisis in a much more relaxed way.

Thus, FAZ squares off former president of the American Reserve, Alan Greenspan ("The euro will collapse") and financier George Soros (the direction the euro crisis is taking is “potentially fatal") against French economist Pascal Salin ("There is no eurocrisis. This is a debt problem in some countries that are members of the eurozone").

To explain this gap, political scientist Stormy-Annika Mildner notes in the newspaper that –

Receive the best of European journalism straight to your inbox every Thursday

The scenarios of the Americans are as dark as they are because Europe is not implementing their political ideas. The Americans want eurobonds, a stronger fiscal union and greater leadership from the Germans.

In addition, some US economists like Harvard's Martin Feldstein have simply not abandoned their scepticism about the euro since it was introduced in the 1990s. It should be noted that while the experts cited by FAZ on the American side are economists, among the Europeans there are a large number of politicians, from Angela Merkel to Francois Hollande, who do not exactly have an interest in coming out as euro-pessimists. Otmar Issing, one of the founding fathers of the euro branded a euro-optimist by FAZ, nevertheless recently wrote that he doubted that all the countries of the eurozone would continue to stay in it.

Tags

Was this article useful? If so we are delighted!

It is freely available because we believe that the right to free and independent information is essential for democracy. But this right is not guaranteed forever, and independence comes at a cost. We need your support in order to continue publishing independent, multilingual news for all Europeans.

Discover our subscription offers and their exclusive benefits and become a member of our community now!

Are you a news organisation, a business, an association or a foundation? Check out our bespoke editorial and translation services.

Support independent European journalism

European democracy needs independent media. Join our community!

On the same topic