[lebeauadi]

and so it goes…

What would be the impediment to instituting a Greek Euro…a regional currency on a national scale ala the Chiemgau experiment, which seems to be doing well?Extraordinary crises call for extraordinary solutions. The root problem is of course a monetary design flaw. Eurobonds or whatever: pumping more money into Greece can’t save it, because nothing keeps that money from flowing right back out again to wherever investment returns are the greatest. It’s like pumping water into a barrel with the bung hole pointing down.

What’s needed is a barrel with no hole: a monetary design that will keep the available money circulating quickly in Greece (etc.), rather than allowing it to drain off to wherever “smart” money is going today. A workable, comprehensive proposal for such a design has recently been put forward by two German complementary economists, Christian Gelleri and Thomas Mayer. Calling it “Express Money”, they envision Greece issuing, under the authority of its own sovereign government and central bank, a special euro with two new features: a spending incentive and a leakage inhibitor. (It’s legal: complementary money is expressly provided for in EU law.) Money that circulates quickly and that can’t flee easily will kickstart the Greek economy, reduce unemployment, increase tax revenues, and generally turn Greece back into the attractive place it used to be before the bankers and financiers got giddy with their debt swaps and derivatives. Read about it (in English, German, and Portuguese; soon in Greek) at http://www.eurorettung.org.

lebeauadi

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