Thursday, 18 November 2010

The Eurozone - a survival crisis?

Former UK diplomat Charles Crawford has some interesting observations about the current crisis of the eurozone:

The risk now as the political and financial contradictions accumulate is that the EU's political elites will make far-reaching policy blunders as they try to maintain the current wobbly arrangements - and their own reputations.
The fascinating policy challenge is this. Even if (say) some EU leaders think the current arrangemements will have to change radically and have a sense of what could be better instead, no-one will want to be first in calling the present system dead for fear of being blamed for prompting a crisis no-one can control.
However, maybe it's better to have a crisis under more or less controlled conditions?
And there will be potentially huge 'first mover advantage' for the leader(s) who first lays down a possible new model, thereby defining the issues in the nervous public eye.
So a febrile game of chicken could unfold, as EU leaders eye each other uneasily.
No-one wants to be the one blamed for shooting the EU.
No-one wants to be left holding the dead body.

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