Krugman -- Goodbye Euro?

(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel

I'm experimenting by putting the link to Krugman's piece today as an "enclosure link." Click on the title to this blog and it will get to it I think.

Then there are 50 comments to Krugman's piece. Here's the best:


Paul Dorell

Evanston, IL
April 29th, 201011:07 pm

I wonder what the wealthy eurozone nations were thinking when they joined. It seems to me that they've already implicitly agreed to bail out Greece or any other eurozone member facing sovereign default. The U.K., Switzerland, Norway and Sweden look smart now for not joining. If Germany and France don't step up to the plate, as they've implicitly agreed to do by joining the eurozone, it may well collapse. It looks to me as if the economics profession has failed badly once again.

and here's another good one. By the way the work to save ourselves ("write me a check for $700 billion"-- Paulson to Congress) was begun in the Bush Administration. I say this as a hater of the Bush Administration. But if we forget this uncomfortable fact we will lose the November election.


Marie Burns
Fort Myers, Florida

April 29th, 201011:07 pm

The European situation is a good lesson in why American Democrats have made this country the strongest in the world, and why it's a bad idea to elect Republicans. Republicans these days act just like European countries intent on maintaining their own fiefdoms and reluctant to pull together in a crisis. As much as Americans dislike Henry Paulson and his "write me a check for $700BB, & don't ask any questions" solution to the U.S. financial crisis, we at least were lucky to have a Treasury Secretary who got around to recognizing a crisis & acting to avert it. (I hate to think what would have happened if John Snow were still serving as Treasury Secretary in late 2008.) Could the Democratic Congress have done a better job of rewriting Henry's blank-check legislation? Well, yes, but at least they too had the guts to act.

It appears Europe needs to follow American Democrats' lead and learn to pull together to save the economies of Portugal, Greece, Ireland and Spain (PIGS), and thereby the economy of the entire continent -- just as we did, no thanks to Republican small-bore thinking.