This article was featured as part of ESSA’s annual Equilibrium publication.
The EU crisis has been painful for EU citizens and policy-makers alike. However, it’s not necessarily all bad news. With a long-term outlook, it is possible that the Eurozone could be stronger for the crisis. More specifically, the crisis has exposed the need for stricter adherence to Eurozone membership requirements and ongoing policy management focused on maintaining economic growth.
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The EU QE experience so far
In March 2015 the EU started its QE program. For success to be achieved it must navigate the secondary bond market, secrecy in bond purchases, and Greece.
Lessons learnt from the EU crisis: looking forward
Free trade nations
With slowing growth in the BRICS and the underwhelming recovery in the U.S., many nations around the world are looking to free trade. Australia, among others, has been negotiating agreements with Asia, forming the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Youth unemployment in the EU
Hysteresis in the periphery
Recently, financial markets around the world have undergone a sharp correction in response to fears of an eventual tapering in the Federal Reserve’s Quantitative Easing program. The reaction was spurred by Ben Bernake’s, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, comments to the press that QE will be slowed if unemployment falls to 7% and inflation remains within their target. Cautiously this may be sooner than expected as the US economy is beginning to show sustained periods of healthy increases in employment growth.
However, the same cannot be said for the European Union. GDP in countries in the periphery continues to decline, with Italy suffering a 2.4% decline and Greece a 5.6% decline in the first quarter of 2013. Alarmingly it’s Italy’s worst recession in 20 years. With this persistently poor performance, comes the danger of hysteresis.
The Euro Crisis: Why Greece is broke but Germany won't do anything about it
Anyone reading the news lately would’ve surely caught on that something is amiss in Europe: The so called ‘PIGS’ (Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain), and especially the Greeks have been on the edge of default for months, causing rumours that the Euro may be headed to the scrap heap. If any of you still remember, the Euro was introduced with great fanfare nearly ten years ago which was supposed to promote closer ties both politically and economically for the EU members in the Euro-zone (The sub-group in the EU that uses the Euro as their currency). So why then, has the Euro’s health deteriorated to such a sickly state?
Read moreThe Euro Crisis: Why Greece is broke but Germany won't do anything about it