you said ………

“Membership of the euro almost guarantees this outcome, because the state can neither inflate away debts nor devalue to energise the exporting sector and to generate the growth that is necessary to pay the old debts.”

With the rocketing price of gold vis a vis the Euro, isn’t this the right time, and only time, for us to decouple from th Euro currency, in order to pay back debts in Euros that would be devaluing themselves on an ongoing basis as the currency’s crisis unwinds?
http://www.uncommonwisdomdaily.com/gold-at-record-highs-8831

The Euro was launched on the basis that sovereign states could constitute a single currency area while being subject to no real constraints on their domestic economic policy. That was a major mistake.

The Euro, like EU membership, can provide, and has provided, massive benefits for its member states but especially in times of low economic growth the implications of that membership need to be understood.

In a single market and currency area, it is normal that some parts of the area are in deficit with other parts – perhaps structurally in deficit. Many US states or Canadian provinces are structurally in deficit with others.

The important thing is that there exist accepted mechanisms for dealing with those deficits. That includes financial transfers to the deficit areas and also movements of resources (capital – and people) to the surplus areas. That , in turn, requires a central political authority strong enough to ensure that the necessary financial transfers occur – and the necessary movements of resources. In federal states, the power of the federal authority is essential for these purposes.

For both these things (financial transfers and movement of resources) to happen in the EU, member states have to give up the powers they possess to interfere with these processes, in particular their ability to fix or influence conditions in the large parts of the economy which can be shielded from outside competition – and their ability to use their tax sovereignty to interfere with or attempt to direct the movement of resources.

In today´s EU, national sovereignty has allowed price differnces to continue to exist in what should be a single market and tax systems to be used essentially to create artificial transfers of resources. As a correpondent to this forum noted, Ireland´s low corporate tax rate has done a lot more for transfer pricing by multinational corporations (artificially locating profits in Ireland) than it has done for Irish jobs.

The way foward, for Ireland, and for the EU as a whole, is to face squarely and honestly the implications of the objectives of the single market and the single currency. Those implications are the transfer of regulatory power over the financial sector to exclusively European institutions and making real progress towards the creation of a real European political authority which can ensure (like the US or Canadian federal governments) that the necessary financial and resource transfers take place between those parts of the union which are necessarily in deficit and those which are in surplus.

When that happens, it will not be possible for one part of the Union to deviate (as Ireland and Greece did) from the overall economic model of the Union and Irish taxpayers (who will no longer exist – only European taxpayers) will not be left on their own to shoulder the consequences of the errors of rogue governments.

“Not one politician from either party is even willing to discuss the fact these promises cannot be honored. “

Same Same here in Ireland, Malcolm.
It’s all about the “Big Picture” and hanging on to power or whatever it is these people get off on.
To dump all the Econo-babble and look logically at whats happening, Money is being loaned to make money to package into fairytale “products” to lend back to lenders. The measure of success is the “profit” and thus bonuses, realised from all this hallucination.
Meanwhile, most of the world hasn’t made a phone call or ate a square meal in their lifetime.
So I suppose it’s relative, all this credit crunch angst. Given a choice of living in Ireland or Afghanistan, it’s a no brainer, even with our present dysfunctional system. No matter how bad NAMA or whatever is, at least we can shop without snipers and the house will be standing in the morning and not run over by a yankee tank. And our kids can go to school without being brainwashed into martyrdom or lifted for being “terrorists”.

Thats me being positive too. Life could be a hell of a lot worse. Here life has some value, the life expectancy of your average Palistinian male youth is fairly slim.
Thge bulk of the world is bereft of fundamental human dignity let alone civil rights.
Has anyone ever given a thought, while on that long haul holiday flight, to the despair and cruelty going on ten miles below. Thats as close as most of us Westerners are going to get to what is reality and daily life for most of the people on Planet Earth.
F