Obviously it wasn't the Nobel "Peace" Prize.
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of D & N Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2012 9:10 PM To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] FW: The Euro is a Big Success - No Kidding And what a contemptuous leer in that photo. A picture says a thousand words. D. P.S. He must have left Canada because his ideas wouldn't fly in this "polite & proper" society. Not enough aggression for him to utilize for his sociopathic needs. On 26/06/2012 5:46 PM, Ray Harrell wrote: So it's a Canadian economist's plot? REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of michael gurstein Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2012 4:02 PM To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION' Subject: [Futurework] FW: The Euro is a Big Success - No Kidding ----Original Message----- From: Greg Palast [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Greg Palast Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2012 6:46 AM To: [email protected] Subject: The Euro is a Big Success - No Kidding <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=c9c031c274&e=bc355c1eee> GregPalast.com Is this email not displaying correctly? <http://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=213cd7bdb4 &e=bc355c1eee> View it in your browser. <http://gallery.mailchimp.com/653153ae841fd11de66ad181a/images/transparent.g if> The Euro is a Big Success - No Kidding by Greg Palast | The Guardian USA Tuesday, 26. June, 2012 <http://gallery.mailchimp.com/33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e/images/Robert_Mundel l.jpg> The idea that the <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=cbb935516a&e=bc355c1eee> euro has "failed" is dangerously naive. The euro is doing exactly what its progenitor - and the wealthy 1%-ers who adopted it - predicted and planned for it to do. That progenitor is former University of Chicago economist <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=a101aa35df&e=bc355c1eee> Robert Mundell. The architect of "supply-side economics" is now a professor at Columbia University, but I knew him through his connection to my Chicago professor, Milton Friedman, back before Mundell's research on currencies and exchange rates had produced the blueprint for European monetary union and a common European currency. _____ Greg Palast is the author of Vultures' Picnic: A Tale of Oil, Finance and Investigative Reporting - Released today in Britain and Ireland. Meet Palast tonight at <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=cb3692d52d&e=bc355c1eee> ULU, in London or in Dublin 3. July. See all the <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=087e71d203&e=bc355c1eee> details here _____ Mundell, then, was more concerned with his bathroom arrangements. Professor Mundell, who has both a Nobel Prize and an ancient villa in Tuscany, told me, incensed: "They won't even let me have a toilet. They've got rules that tell me I can't have a toilet in this room! Can you imagine?" As it happens, I can't. But I don't have an Italian villa, so I can't imagine the frustrations of bylaws governing commode placement. But Mundell, a can-do Canadian-American, intended to do something about it: come up with a weapon that would blow away government rules and labor regulations. (He really hated the union plumbers who charged a bundle to move his throne.) "It's very hard to fire workers in Europe," he complained. His answer: the euro. The euro would really do its work when crises hit, Mundell explained. Removing a government's control over currency would prevent nasty little elected officials from using Keynesian monetary and fiscal juice to pull a nation out of recession. "It puts monetary policy out of the reach of politicians," he said. "[And] without fiscal policy, the only way nations can keep jobs is by the competitive reduction of rules on business." He cited labor laws, environmental regulations and, of course, taxes. All would be flushed away by the euro. Democracy would not be allowed to interfere with the marketplace - or the plumbing. <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=8ad85f74e8&e=bc355c1eee> As another Nobelist, Paul Krugman, notes, the creation of the eurozone violated the basic economic rule known as "optimum currency area". This was a rule devised by Bob Mundell. That doesn't bother Mundell. For him, the euro wasn't about turning Europe into a powerful, unified economic unit. It was about Reagan and Thatcher. " <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a 92e&id=8f54b12153&e=bc355c1eee> Ronald Reagan would not have been elected president without Mundell's influence," <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a 92e&id=8896b58d43&e=bc355c1eee> once wrote Jude Wanniski in the Wall Street Journal. The supply-side economics pioneered by Mundell became the theoretical template for <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=7e5f1866a5&e=bc355c1eee> Reaganomics - or as George Bush the Elder called it, "voodoo economics": the magical belief in free-market nostrums that also inspired the policies of Mrs. Thatcher. Mundell explained to me that, in fact, the euro is of a piece with Reaganomics: "Monetary discipline forces fiscal discipline on the politicians as well." And when crises arise, economically disarmed nations have little to do but wipe away government regulations wholesale, privatize state industries en masse, slash taxes and send the European welfare state down the drain. Thus, we see that (unelected) Prime Minister Mario Monti is demanding labor law "reform" in Italy to make it easier for employers like Mundell to fire those Tuscan plumbers. Mario Draghi, the (unelected) head of the <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=aa381016c1&e=bc355c1eee> European Central Bank, is calling for "structural reforms" - a euphemism for worker-crushing schemes. They cite the nebulous theory that this "internal devaluation" of each nation will make them all more competitive. Monti and Draghi cannot credibly explain how, if every country in the Continent cheapens its workforce, any can gain a competitive advantage. ?But they don't have to explain their policies; they just have to let the markets go to work on each nation's bonds. Hence, currency union is class war by other means. The crisis in Europe and the flames of Greece have produced the warming glow of what the supply-siders' philosopher-king <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=a49eb26de3&e=bc355c1eee> Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction". Schumpeter acolyte and free-market apologist Thomas Friedman flew to Athens to visit the "impromptu shrine" of the burnt-out bank where three people died after it was fire-bombed by anarchist protesters, and used the occasion to <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=cb7ecfb57e&e=bc355c1eee> deliver a homily on globalization and Greek "irresponsibility". The flames, the mass unemployment, the fire-sale of national assets, would bring about what Friedman called a "regeneration" of Greece and, ultimately, the entire eurozone. So that Mundell and those others with villas can put their toilets wherever they damn well want to. Far from failing, the euro, which was Mundell's baby, has succeeded probably beyond its progenitor's wildest dreams. Media requests for interviews with the author or review copy requests go to olivershykles (at) gmail(dot)com For more information about Vultures' Picnic visit: <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a 92e&id=c13135cdaa&e=bc355c1eee> VulturesPicnic.org <http://www.twitter.com/Greg_Palast/> Follow Palast on Twitter | <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a 92e&id=d9dcf02426&e=bc355c1eee> Like Palast on Facebook | <http://us4.forward-to-friend2.com/forward?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e&id=21 3cd7bdb4&e=bc355c1eee> Forward to a friend Subscribe to <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=f73db12fe8&e=bc355c1eee> Palast's Newsletter | <http://gregpalast.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a9 2e&id=46700ee05f&e=bc355c1eee> Podcasts Share this with <http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fus4.campaign-archive2.com% 2F%3Fu%3D33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e%26id%3D213cd7bdb4&t=The%20Euro%20is%20a%2 0Big%20Success%20-%20No%20Kidding> Facebook <http://twitter.com/?status=The%20Euro%20is%20a%20Big%20Success%20-%20No%20K idding%20-%20http%3A%2F%2Feepurl.com%2Fm6MJH> Twitter <http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=http%3A%2F%2Fus4.campaign-archive2.com%2 F%3Fu%3D33e4ec877eed6a43863a4a92e%26id%3D213cd7bdb4&title=The%20Euro%20is%20 a%20Big%20Success%20-%20No%20Kidding> Digg Copyright C 2012 Greg Palast, All rights reserved. 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