Time to put the doomed euro out of its misery

Europe can’t accept that the economics of the single currency condemn it to failure.

There is no mess quite so bad that official intervention won’t make it even worse. Nowhere is this old saw more applicable than in the eurozone, where only a month or so back, leaders were warmly congratulating themselves on having seen off the worst of the debt crisis. As is apparent from the events of the past week, these hopes were not just premature, but naive. The crisis is once again intensifying, with the focus of attention switching from Greece to Spain.

The European Central Bank’s flooding of the banking system with cheap money didn’t solve the problem, or provide more than short-term relief for its symptoms. After a brief period of remission, they are returning. At best, the ECB bought a little time. This has not been used well. Instead, the eurozone has just ploughed on with the same old set of failed policies.

The Spanish government, for example, recently announced 29 billion euros of spending cuts and tax increases. It failed to do the trick, so this week a further 10 billion was added to the tally. This only succeeded in unnerving the markets even more, forcing the ECB to concede that it might have to engage in further purchases of Spanish government bonds. Read More

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