Скачать или смотреть How to eliminate Eurozone Public Sector Debt without austerity

This is an English version of a talk that I gave at a meeting that took place in Montbrun-Bocage on Saturday 13th April 2013. I shared the stage with Professor François Morin, an economist from the University of Toulouse. I thank the organisers for the invitation to what ended up as a very lively debate.

In the talk I argue that there is a way out of the the current Eurozone Crisis. It requires 3 key steps that would allow governments to get out of debt and avoid the 3% of GDP that is currently lost in interest payments to the financial sector.
1) The the European Central Bank should be forced to take over all public sector debt
2) The ECB should impose a tax on all electronic transactions denominated in Euros, irrespective of where they occur.
3) The ECB should then redestribute revenues from the tax according to each country's population size within the Eurozone and use the money to pay off each country's debt.

I back the proposals with data on the scale of Euro-denominated transactions in areas such as Foreign Exchange and Interest Rate Swaps. Although much of this activity occurs outside the Eurozone, 19.5% of foreign exchange involves Euros, and 40% of Interest Rate Swaps currently involve Euros.

During the debate after the talk, François Morin agreed with the numbers I used, but was not very optimistic about the chances of such reforms getting through. I would agree that there will be massive resistance from the financial sector who currently receive hundreds of billions of euros every year in unjustifiable interest payments.

However, the stakes are very high. If political parties at next year's European Elections were to take the three key ideas on board, I believe that it is possible to fix the system before it is too late.