vendredi 30 septembre 2011

Euro en crise: pourquoi les politiciens américains se défilent-ils?


Qui veut être porteur de mauvaises nouvelles? Au plan économique, les États-Unis ne sont pas maîtres de leur destin...

"It could easily force the United States back into recession and become the issue on which the 2012 elections turn. But the national political press has all but ignored it, and none of the GOP's Presidential hopefuls have been asked about it in any of their endless series of debates.

The European monetary union is on the verge of collapse. In the wake of 2008's global financial crisis, several countries on the Euro have amassed crushing debt burdens and seen their economies stall or buckle. And now the severity of their problems, combined with political paralysis in the union's more stable countries, threatens to bring the whole system down.

If that happens -- and many analysts say its a question of when, not if -- it will plunge all of Europe into financial crisis. But that will have far reaching consequences around the globe, including in the United States, and it hasn't widely sunk in that it could break our meager recovery and weigh heavily on Presidential politics next year.

Several weeks ago, Washington Post blogger Dylan Matthews wrote a helpful summary of the differences between the debt crises in various Eurozone countries -- specifically Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain or PIIGS. Of those countries, Greece, which was particularly profligate during the boom years and can't plausibly pay off its debts, is in the most dire shape. But all of them are teetering, the banks and countries that lent them money are heavily exposed, and fixing the problem would likely require healthier economies in northern Europe to bear the losses. If things start to unwind -- if Greece defaults and leaves the union, the other PIIGS countries will likely domino and Europe will be plunged into the economic abyss.

The other option is for healthier Euro countries to basically provide Greece with massive amounts of assistance for years -- an option that's not politically palatable.

Barry Eichengreen, a U.C. Berkeley economics professor who recognized flaws in the structure of the Euro before this crisis, says the doomsday scenario can be averted, but only via a series of complicated steps that European leaders don't seem entirely prepared to make."

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/09/euro-crisis-the-biggest-story-in-american-politics-and-nobodys-talking-about-it.php?ref=fpa

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