È un po’ lungo il pezzo di John Tamny – che scrive per RealClearMarkets e Forbes – ma ve lo consiglio caldamente. Non foss’altro per il titolo: Europe’s Problem Is Decidedly Not the Euro. È snervante l’idea di aver perso nello scorso triennio di Nuova Depressione la possibilità di far fare un passo in avanti alla costruzione delle istituzioni comuni europee. Di seguito un breve estratto. Buona lettura.

More realistically, when Greece was bailed out, it wasn’t a country that’s been in arrears to creditors for half its modern existence being bailed out, rather it was the banks with exposure to its debt. Lowry might find himself in a difficult situation there given the nominally free market National Review’s endorsement of TARP and the various U.S. bank bailouts, but if conservatives would stick to basic principles that elevate both success and failure, Greece would have defaulted, some banks with improper exposure would have happily gone under, and a wasteful government would have been starved of capital to the benefit of private sector interests in the same country.

Returning to “contagion”, Italy and Spain find themselves facing default today precisely because the banks with exposure to Greek debt were bailed out implicitly through a bailout of the country. Absent this most economy-sapping of moves by the IMF and various governments, Italy and Spain would have seen clearly that there would be no relief coming their way, and fear of default would have forced them to get their fiscal houses in order much earlier. In short, the “contagion” that Lowry refers to is the logical result of governments messing with natural market forces, and in doing so, authoring much worse problems (Italy and Spain, once again) down the line.