 I'm very happy to be here again to speak on the euro. The timing is perfect. Probably, Joe Salerno called Varoufakis in the beginning of the year and told him, well, let the crisis escalate in July so that we have a very timeless topic for me this year. We were very close of an exit of Greece from the euro zone. Why? Where does all the mess come from? What is happening in Greece? Where are we going? If you're interested in these questions, you are right here. In order to understand all the problematic of the euro, to understand it, you have to combine a historical analysis with an economic analysis. You have to look where the euro comes from and how the monetary system is set up. So in this lecture, we will do both. There are two visions for Europe. There's a libertarian or a classical liberal one and a socialist one. The founding fathers of the European integration, the EU, Konrad Adenauer, Robert Schumann and Ithida de Gasparri, they were still closer to this classical liberal vision. They had experienced the war. They wanted peace for Europe. They were influenced very much by these experiences. All of them were Catholic and they spoke together German. They were all German speakers. For this vision, the most fundamental Christian European value is individual liberty. In this vision, there still exists the sovereign states that defend property rights, their open borders and the free exchange of goods and services. One early success of this vision was the Treaty of Rome in 1957 that established free trade of goods and services and also free movement of people in the European Union. The problem of the Treaty of Rome was that the French politicians introduced the common agricultural policy, which is basically subsidies and central planning for agriculture. This vision just wanted to bring back what classical liberalism had achieved in the 19th century and what had been lost during the age of nationalism and socialism in two board wars. This vision recognizes that we only need liberty for flourishing in peace and we don't need a European super state. Then on the other hand, we have the socialist vision, which is represented by politicians as Jacques Delors or François Mitterrand and they want a European super state. They want Europe to be like a fortress, like an empire. Protection is to the outside and intervention is to the inside. With the redistribution within Europe and the sovereign states cease to exist and they all become subjects to Brussels. The idea of a European super state is nothing new. Charles the Great, Napoleon, Hitler, they all wanted to establish one European empire, a central government in Europe, by military means. Now the means are slightly less violent. They are more political means. And one tactic of the socialist side is typically to use crisis situations to enhance the power of the central government of the European Commission for example. And we see this again in the crisis situation that we have the Euro crisis. The ECB is assuming more power. The EU Commission is assuming more power. New institutions are founded, the European stability mechanism and so on. So these are the two visions. Of course there is a struggle between them because they are mutually, they are contradicting each other. More power for the central states means less liberty. To get an idea who's on which side, who's more on the libertarian side and who's more on the socialist side. These are of course only tendencies and of course the governments always also change. But there we can see some general tendencies. For example Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, they are more closer to the vision of independent states, the tradition of liberty, while France, Belgium and the other nations are more on the side of the socialist vision for Europe. And the socialists in Europe are normally always led by the French political elite. France is key to understand the European Union and the Euro, also what happened in Greece, like last week. After the humiliation of 1940, you know, Blitzkrieg and the loss of the colonies, the French political elite wanted like a substitute for the lost empire in Europe. And the French political elite wanted also to prevent that Germany would recuperate its natural weight and power in the heart of Europe and got back its lost territories. So the idea was to absorb Germany into the European Union under the leadership of France. So that was the idea. And it looked like the socialist side would win. Over the years, the EU budget would increase. There would be more regulations, more harmonizations. The EU commission would get more power. So it looked like the socialists were winning, but then one unexpected event happened that Ludwig van Miesithet predicted 70 years ago the fall of communism. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989. And this changed the scenario completely. The balance of power changed completely. Why? Because for one, with the reunification of Germany, the communist eastern part would join West Germany, Germany would get more power and Germany was more on the libertarian side. Also, the countries of the east, of Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary, they wanted to join. And they were of course tired of empires. They would not come in on the socialist side. They would come in on the libertarian side. So the balance of power was about to tip against the socialists. In fact, the French government did not want, vetoed a fast extension of the EU, eastwards in the 1990s because they feared that otherwise the EU would just degenerate in their terms into a great free trade zone. So the balance of power was to tip against the socialist. What did they do? They did one step forward, which was they pressured for the introduction of a common currency, the euro. The plans had always been there, but they knew that now we have to push this on because otherwise the whole project could go to the libertarian side and more to a free trade zone. Here we have some statements that show the intention behind the introduction of the euro. We have here the ex-president of France who said that the ECB would finally put an end to the monetary supremacy of Germany. Jacques Attali said that the master's treaty that introduced the euro was just a complicated contract whose purpose was to get rid of the German currency. And Mitterrand said to Thatcher without the common currency we are all you and we under the German rule. When they raise their interest rates we have to follow and you do the same so you do not participate in our currency system. We can only join in if there's a European central bank where we decide together. So these were the motivations behind the introduction of the euro. We should never forget this. So why was the German central bank so feared by French politicians, for example? Why did they want to get rid of the Bundesbank? Why did they want to have the European central bank where they could control it? In fact there was a saying that the most righted German institution after World War II was the Bundesbank. Well, before the euro we had the European stability mechanism. It was a system of fixed exchange rates and to maintain fixed exchange rates to be in the system you can only inflate as much as the country that inflates less. Which was typically Germany. So it takes the French government. If the French government wanted to increase their spending, have a government deficit and want to print money to finance the deficit they could not do so if the German Bundesbank would not print at the same rhythm. Because otherwise they would have to devalue. They would be very embarrassing. They would show the population that they were doing the worst job than German politicians. It's like a smoking gun that there has been inflation. So they did not want to do that. That means indirectly stubborn German monetary politicians that did not inflate as much as other countries were restricting government spending in France. The French government could not spend as much. It could not have as high a deficit as it wanted. It could not print as much money as it wanted because of the system. So they wanted to get rid of the Bundesbank. And the euro was of course the means to achieve it. There is an anecdote that I like to tell about French and German diplomats coming together at the end of the 1980s because the French were installing short-range nuclear weapons at the border to Germany that it would only reach into Germany. So the German politicians of course had this kind of awkward situation. Of course the legitimation was if the Soviets would invade western Germany then we will attack them there. But of course it is not really really a nice night either even if the Soviets come in that you are nuked with atomic weapons. The diplomats said what can we do about this? Can we do something about this? Of course let's first talk about the German atomic bomb and then the Germans said well you know that we are not allowed to have atomic weapons and we don't have any. What are you talking about? Then the French replied the D-mark, the Deutschmark we are talking about. So there you see that it was like a threat to French sovereignty because indirectly through the Bundesbank and the inflationary policy that was not as inflationary as the French wanted they were restricting policy options they were restricting French government spending they wanted to get rid of it. So the fall of the Berlin Wall was then a unique opportunity to achieve this end and now the archives are opened and it is now effect that François Mitterrand demanded the introduction of a single currency in exchange for his permission for German reunification. To remember the situation in 1899 the Germany was still occupied by the four Allies literally of course vastly inferior to France no sovereignty, no peace treaty signed and then comes Mitterrand says well you can have your reunification but to be sure that you don't attack us again we need more unification in Europe more centralization in Europe and integration beneath a single currency. He actually there threatened by saying if we don't step forward with European integration we will have a situation as in 1913 you know what happened in 1914 first world war broke out two front war for Germany didn't go so well twice in the 20th century so of course if Mitterrand says this to a German politician what does it mean? It's like a threat of isolation and there's like a trauma a German trauma threat because it led to try to catastrophes so long, long story short at the end it meant the end of the D-mark which was an important victory for the socialist vision because it means the euro as you will see provokes crisis that can then be used for more integration and centralization in Europe What are the reasons why inflation prone countries wanted the euro besides of getting rid of the Bundesbank which we already discussed one was to get the prestige of this of the central bank which had a lot of prestige if you get this prestige also for your currency your currency will be stronger your imports will be lower your population will be more happy another reason was the senior rush know what senior rush is senior rush is the profit from central bank money production here's a senior rush of the ECB the ECB is distributed in a unique way all central banks at the end of the year send their profits to the ECB in a common pool and then from this pool the profits are distributed according to the capital share the capital share was calculated by two measures by population and GDP ok central banks don't get the same back as they pay in surprise and surprise Germany gets back less than it pays in and France it's the other way around so this way is another reason lower interest rates for government debt why you know that in the market interest rate you have several components you have the original rate of interest determined by type preference then you have risk premium for possible default and there's an inflation premium for the inflationary expectations both of these later premiums were reduced because the risk premium for example for Italian debt was reduced when they joined the common currency because it was assumed by markets that if things get really worse the stronger nations will bail out the weaker nations so the risk premium on government debt on Spanish government debt on Greek government debt was reduced so these countries these governments had to pay lower interest rates on their debts there's market expectations that the strong countries governments would bail out governments and problems of course turned out to be right and inflationary expectations went down because the idea was with the euro that we were it's also placed in Frankfurt so it will be like the Bundesbank so it will be less inflationary as for example the lira so this meant that all these countries suddenly had to pay much lower interest rates on their debt which gave them a margin for more government spending like a Christmas present for all these politicians it was also excuse for austerity measures because some of these countries were already on the verge of bankruptcy Italy for example so they had to do reforms and now they could sell these reforms saying we have to do this because we want to go get into the euro we have to privatize telefonica etc so it was an excuse to say this a monetary redistribution also as we will see that with the euro more new money was introduced in Tartan countries than in the northern countries and the strong currency of course is also good for you because the imports are cheaper your population is richer here are some graphs to illustrate it here you see the interest rate 3 months interest rate on government bonds and some countries the low line, the red line is Germany and you see that the interest rates approach the German level so the risk premium and the inflationary premium were reduced once it became clear who would join the monetary union which started in 98 so there you can see that they approached the German level of course there is still a difference with Greece because Greece did not join were not the first members of the Eurozone they came only in 2001 when they had classified the statistics so not yet at this point so there is still a difference later they also came down to the German level here you see the unit labor cost like an indicator for competitiveness and you see that the southern countries used the Euro for increase in wages huge increase in wages in these countries they got less competitive government deficit and so on higher wages less competitive while in Germany which is the green line from 2005 to 2010 it got more competitive that means that wages did not rise so they were basically constant and productivity increased so competitiveness increased and I show you this because it is often said that Germany was the great benefiter the great winner of the Euro but actually wages were constant and also consumption from 95 to 2010 and the blue line in consumption if you take consumption as a proxy of living standards you see no now not such a great deal it was zero compared to France consumption increased 40% or Spain increased from 2000 to 2007 more than 20% consumption here is increase in M3 and here you see also that most of the new money was introduced in the 1000 red line is Spain blue line is Greece the money supply was increasing between 10 and 20% in these countries while in Germany thick blue line was mostly less of the new money was going there so these were the reasons why the southern countries wanted you see the consumption increased the living standard increased but why would the Germans want the Euro more? when the population were against it economists were against it lawyers said it was unconstitutional as we already said there was like the gun if you don't do the Euro now you won't get your reunification German politicians also wanted to get rid of the Bundesbank because they wanted more government spending but they could not win against the Bundesbank because the Bundesbank had a very strong support in the population due to the hyperinflation after World War I and then after World War II in the monetary reform again all savings were basically lost so the Bundesbank with its anti-inflationary stand had a strong support in the population and when a politician dared to touch the independence the Bundesbank the politician would lose elections so they wanted to get rid of it and this was a way to achieve it the Euro and also this idea also of this class of politicians that with the common currency there would be never war again it's a question of war and peace with the common currency and there would be no war again and there also would be kind of self-protection because you know how aggressive Germans are and if you don't change yourself with the common currency you will probably invade other countries again I'm restricting myself also very hard because my Titanic jeans are pressing me to attack you I also have great self-discipline so this self-discipline they wanted to enforce through the common currency seriously they argued this in the Bundestag in the parliament that they argued in the parliament that Germany could have been a threat to Europe to peace twice so now we have to do this okay let's come to the economics the ECB how it is set up let's compare first with the Fed the Fed with the Fed the monetization of government deficits is slightly different if the government spends more than it receives in Texas for the difference it prints some paper on it use it then the banking system may buy these bonds and sell them to the Fed or the Fed actually bought them directly so then the banking system gets more reserves and can expand credits which is its main business and very attractive so the government bonds go to the Fed and more money is created then the government pays interest on its bonds the Fed has a profit and what does it do with the profit you guess what will it do with the profit sends it back to the government at least the large amount of it the majority so it's a very nice way to finance your expenditures by just printing paper you write on it government bonds you never have to pay it because when they come to you you assume more of them you don't even have to pay the interest because the interest flows back to you or you print more government bonds to pay the interest how is it in the eurozone in the eurozone traditionally it's slightly different when a government spends more than it receives in Texas it also prints government bonds the banks buy these bonds and then they pledge them as collateral for new loans from the ECB so traditionally the ECB as does the Fed did not buy these bonds it just accept them as collateral and gives them new reserves more loans to the banking system then the banking system has more reserves and can expand credit so here the ECB does not become the legal owner of the bonds as does the Fed it has just had the bonds as collateral and as long as the loans are rolled over renewed it is the same here the difference is of course that the interest now are paid to the banking system because the banking system is the legal owner of the bonds and the banking system has to pay interest of course for the loans from the ECB but there is a differential so some money remains in the banking system and of course the ECB makes profits which is very limited then through the governments the profits are the sovereign so the difference of course is here that we have not one government in the Eurozone but several so my argument in the book it's called the tragedy of zero it's the tragedy of the Cummins what is the tragedy of the Cummins it's an extreme case of negative externalities which always arise when there are inappropriate when there's an inappropriate defense or definition of property rights where several individuals can exploit one commonly owned resource an example are schools of fish in the ocean and there are several fishers they all can fish the fish the fish is so the incentive is to fish them as fast as possible because if I don't fish the fish the other fisher will come and get it so even if I have a small fish I won't throw it back into the ocean because the other fisher will get it if I would be if the swarm of school of fish would be my private property then I would have totally different incentives I would only fish so much that it can reproduce itself probably because I own the capital value of the school if there are others that they can get them then the incentive is to fish as fast as possible consequences of course an over exploitation of the commonly owned resource here we have to say what is the commonly owned resource here well it's a purchasing power of the euro when a government spends more than it receives in taxes it can print their government bonds the banking system buys them gives them to the ECB the ECB produces more money gives reserves to the banks they can expand credit as a consequence there is a tendency for prices to increase for the purchasing power of money to fall so the negative externalities is the loss in purchasing power the incentives then for the government, for the politician let's take here the Greek politician okay I can buy boats simply simply by spending more by just printing my government bonds that are now bought and monetized and then prices rise but prices rise not only in Greece they rise in the Eurozone they rise they rise in France, they rise in Italy, they rise in Germany so part of the costs of my deficits the costs of my gifts presents to the voters part of these costs I can externalize on funds on Italians, French, Germans and the cool thing is they don't vote in Greek elections so I can give a gift to my voters and the costs are partially externalized on others it's a case of country-owned effects the first receivers of the new money profit in this case the Greek government and the last receivers and some maybe other European, Eurozone country they lose because prices rise before the income is rising and because not only the Greek politician but all politicians have this incentive it's a strategy of the Cummins the Cummins own resources and purchasing power of the Euro it can be exploited by running a deficit that is financed through the banking system in the ECB and the incentive is to fish as fast as possible also imagine the following example let's say Germany has a deficit of 3% of GDP and the rest of the Eurozone has a deficit of 10% of GDP all these deficits are monetized through the way that I explained so prices rise on average 8% in the Eurozone that means that the German government even though it has a government deficit it's real government spending may actually fall because prices rise faster than the deficit so in this redistribution you can only win if you have a higher deficit than the others so you have to fish faster than the others you have to have of course you see immediately that this is highly destructive this leads to a hyperinflation it's comparable to a printing press that we would have here a printing press to print dollars and we could all use it of course I use it prices go up, you use it, prices go up I say oh prices have gone up, I have to print more and then you print also, you print faster we all print every faster it all ends very quickly in hyperinflation so then the question is obviously why does the Euro still exist why has it not died in hyperinflation well I explained it to you already of course governments cannot print directly Euros they can only print this paper and write on it, Greek government born or German government born they depend on that the banks buy it buy these bonds and that the ECB accept these bonds as collateral and this is not guaranteed so there's some risk in it for example the ECB could say where you have accumulated so many debts we won't accept your bonds anymore as collateral so you have to be somewhat careful in this at the end of course even though the rating of Greek government bonds for example were rated junk bonds the ECB still accepted these bonds as collateral which shows that this limit this limit to the tragedy of the Cummins which is the risk the ECB will not monetize your government bonds is reduced because the Euro is a political project and ECB at the end accepts your collateral no matter what your government bonds no matter what even if it's rated junk another limit for the tragedy of the Cummins is the stability and growth pact the stability and growth pact established that there should be a limit on government deficit of 3% of GDP like the fissures saying let's fish only x tons of fish per year let's exploit this commonly owned resource the purchasing policy you're owning 3% of GDP where the problem here was that no one ever regarded this as a rule that had to be followed in 2010 all countries except Luxembourg had a GDP of more than 3% the last we probably never had the deficit lower than 3% or beside the year they got entry into the Eurozone why did it not work because it was basically a voluntary agreement between fishers no one is enforcing it so the run for deficit continues the stability and growth pact was a failure okay I will skip this because we are running out of time that the Euro generates conflicts we know that free trade brings you and contact with each other harmonious cooperation generates peace while the Euro generates conflicts because it ends this harmonious cooperation you as a greek government you just run deficits to buy you accumulate debt you will never be paid to buy german goods and then when german government says you should not have higher debts you should stop that then the conflict arises I wanted to explain you a little bit the situation of Greece because it is so recent and talk about Greece Greece bailout as you have seen the greek government has been bailed out from the very beginning through the tragedy of the Euro and that indirectly the greek debt was guaranteed by stronger nations and through the exploitation of the purchasing power of the Euro they could have much higher real government spending than they would have had otherwise well the bailout was made explicit then in May 2010 110 billion euros then in May 2010 the ECB started also buying directly greek government bonds which is actually prohibited in the master's treaty then in 2012 there was another bailout of 130 billion there was also debt restructuring where private bond holders lost 75% which amounts to 10,000 euros for every greek ok then the 25th and January series the party is elected in Greece and of course it was clear they said it before we won't continue with austerity measures we will hire new public employees we will have a higher deficit and so on so this was this is a big thing on the 25th of January series is elected because it can change all of the Euro it can mean that Germany has to pay more to keep it afloat there could be another bailout it could be very bad for the german population Spiegel which is german greedly magazine had a cover what do you think they had a cover the day before any idea do you think it's on Greece 70 years anniversary of Auschwitz liberation so it was more important that 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz like the last the last testimonials of course german have to be guilty feel guilty still today to bear it's a duty to mankind to at least to maintain the euro to bail out Greece so coincidence or not the day before they brought this in Spiegel yeah there is a guild complex in Germany which explains why the euro still exists and because otherwise it would not I have also put you this cover which was then in March it shows I mean you could expect such a cover maybe in Greece but to have it in Germany it's it's amazing to have Angela Merkel there with Wehrmacht soldiers ok you see how public opinion in Germany works to continue with the story theories have then said ok we won't we won't of course more bailout money but we won't do what you tell us because we are democracy and we want to hire more public employees and so on so what did the ECB do it stopped it stopped to accept greed debt as collateral it cut the line but at the same time it extended ELA what is ELA? emergency liquidity assistance which says that the national central bank can accept basically whatever they want as collateral at their own risk that is if there are losses the natural central bank of Greece will suffer the losses and not the other central banks so what does it mean in the case of a bank run for example if a Greek citizen gets cash out of his bank the Greek bank does not have reserves the Greek bank demands a loan from the central bank of Greece which is in this case ELA and it can put anything as collateral Greek government bonds bank debt whatever so this is an example of the bank run how it works it needs ELA capital flight how does it work in this scheme for example when a Greek citizen says I transfer my money to a German bank to a Deutsche Bank so it reduces his amount in the Greek bank transfers it to Germany what does it mean for the Greek bank of course it needs also more reserves it has to go to the central bank of Greece and demand another loan and then the Deutsche Bank gets acclaim on the Bundesbank a credit on DCB and the debit for the central bank of Greece these are the target too debit and credit claims so you see that to continue the transfer of Greek money to Germany you need more ELA and also to get cash out of the bank you need more ELA so what happens then on June 27th Cyprus announced to hold a referendum on the bailout conditions next day DCB says no more ELA we won't increase ELA that means game over for Greek banks if we go back here if Greeks get more cash out of their fractional reserve banks the cash is not there they need more and then the Greek banks need more ELA DCB said no, no more so what did the Greek government do it closed the banks no other options and this is how fractional reserve banking works and of course also no more capital flights Greeks they had to introduce capital controls because if a Greek transfers his money to a German bank or a Swiss bank so the bank needs also more loans from the Greek central bank and this was prohibited when ELA was frozen so what they had to do is to introduce bank holidays and capital controls ok then there was the no vote 2019 and then at the end the French position again prevailed I mean you can see it on all the history of the euro that the French position always prevails that you get rid of the demarc you get French president of ECB and so on do all the bailouts here again there will be a third bailout Greek Greece will receive 86 billion additional euros which is not so bad because it's 50% of GDP so not so bad and of course there's no intention to ever pay back the money the conclusion the future of Europe and the euro depends on who will finally pay the debt that will never be paid back in real terms there are several options and of course also how the tragedy of the comments will be addressed because if this problem of the tragedy of the euro still exists even if we reduce the debt the problem will be there again there are three possibilities which I mean I already 2010 put these possibilities and they are still they are still the logical possibilities one is the reform of the stability and growth pact that is 3% restriction of deficits or make it 2% or zero both penalties if governments do not comply it implies harsh austerity measures and structural reforms this is the option that my my intellectual father who was at the Soto hopes for and thinks it will happen the problem is of course that the population may be too socialist or have maybe have gotten too accustomed to the very first day to accept this and you see this in the in Greece the population voted for a party that said no to these austerity measures the next option is the euro soon splits Greece leaves and we were very close to that we were very close to that or and this is far more ahead of course because the german population has the guilt complex and so on so but if things get really ugly for a long time it could be that germany actually leaves and the last option is a transfer union that continually there will be transfer transfers from the north to the south there will be more centralization there will be more inflation European super state and with this Greece example we had all of them they talked about austerity measures they promised it was close to split up and we will have more transfers more centralization where will it go where I hope the history of the euro and the theory that I presented here will give you a hint thank you very much