 The Eurozone and the European Union is I guess at this point the most stagnant part of the global economy You are headed back into recession you're gonna have your your in negative growth country again This is astounding seven years into the greatest economic recession in five generations and Europe isn't coming out. It's about to dip back in I think it's the result of absolutely disastrous Economic policies that have been pursued. It's fiscal austerity doesn't work When you're in recession you need expansionary government spending And Instead just the opposite has been the reaction from my point of view. It's sort of a an Incredible mindless failure to remember the fundamental lessons of Keynesian economics that we learned five generations ago So it's sort of incompetent economic policy that is terribly counterproductive that's solving the problem and the problem is the recession problem is Getting Europe to grow again. I Trying to sort of provoke people to really think seriously about what's going on by saying, you know, we used to call Europe You know Europe's part of the advanced. It's an advanced economy. You're the advanced economies Well, maybe you're gonna be the formerly advanced economies it doesn't take too many years of Growing at 1% or not at all or even negative 1% While other regions of the global economy are clipping along at 4 or 5 percent which some regions have been Doesn't take too many years of that before advanced becomes formerly advanced So I stand in amazement, you know that this is the process that's going on The other thing that's happened is that this this crisis was triggered by you know Terrible financial crisis the recession came as a result was triggered by The worst financial crisis in five generations and that financial crisis did break in the United States. It broke in Wall Street and it was in turn triggered by the bursting of the US housing bubble But one of the dangerous things that had happened in the global financial industry was the connections between The European fight European finance was so tightly connected to to us finance a Lot of the banks it wasn't just us banks that were holding these mortgaged based securities That turned out to be you know of practically no value overnight European banks and major financial investors had purchased a lot of these things too So you were also quickly affected by a financial crash the the three the three big banks in Ireland good example the Iceland banks, but In any case Both in the United States and in Europe there really has been no real successful financial reform so that the the financial sector here in Europe as in the United States is Really an even bigger accident waiting to happen than it was in 2007 that doesn't mean it's you're gonna have a financial crisis in 12 months or maybe not 18 months. It just means the situation is just as dangerous. It was before because nothing's been done in in this regard my understanding is that Some countries have been more willing to start to make some moves in that direction In this case Germany actually won and other countries have been completely unwilling You know to even think about such things and the UK would be sort of the principal obstacle in this case the Obviously the principal sort of movers the the country within the Europeans within the EU that has insisted on the austerity and keeps insisting on the The strict appliance of the rules of unification that limited deficits that country governments could run is Germany They're the ones that are holding to this despite all evidence that even in very narrow Even in its old even even in the very narrow sense of its own goals, which is to reduce the indebtedness of Country governments like Greece and Portugal and Spain and Ireland. In fact, it's the evidence is overwhelming It's had seven years of very high rates of unemployment as a result of these spending cuts You now have societies that are literally being torn apart of the seams I mean political rifts You know that are incredibly dangerous including the rise of you know of Nazi and conservative movements that that should be frightening to you know to anybody that was hoping that what this was going to be was a More peaceful and cooperative Europe So that's been the price you've paid for the austerity and what was supposed to be the payoff What was the game? What was the whole purpose of it to reduce the indebtedness of these country governments and yet? every single one of these so-called pigs in southern Europe the debt public debt To GDP ratio, which is the reasonable way to measure sort of how indebted is a country How how big is a public debt? I mean you got to compare it to the size of the economy? That's what you're doing. Well the the debt to GDP ratio for every one of these southern European economies is over double in 2014 was what it was in 2007 So what have you gotten for this? Program that has been the dominant program continues to be the dominant program and that is principally pushed by By Germany more than any other particular government or delegation within the Union You actually have created greater indebtedness problems as Keynesian economics would have predicted and has predicted and does predict and yet Policy continues to this day So that's the problem as I see it in the eurozone And I think there are solutions and that there are economists and people who have good ideas about the what those solutions are But nowhere are they being implemented? There is no government in power in Europe seven years in That is doing the things that are necessary to solve these problems. And I mean that that's a stark contrast to the Great Depression Seven years into the Great Depression We were five years into the New Deal in the United States and similar things were going on in European economies at the same time Seven years into this great recession Which now is dipping again in Europe? We we are we there isn't a single Government in power any place in Europe that is pursuing any of the policies that would actually improve matters Every single government is continuing to pursue policies. That's just aggravating the problems