Inflation in Germany is not an automatic remedy for the periphery's economic woes

While having already addressed the argument which asserts a mechanical alleviation of the economic duress in the eurozone's periphery by virtue of spontaneous or instigated rising inflation in the core, Germany in particular, I continue to feel an inclination to restate my position on the matter, after having been stimulated or inspired to proceed thus by a discussion I held with a friend earlier this day, which reminded me of the assemblage of questionable assumptions still prevalent in certain political or intellectual circles, concerning ideas on the most optimal response to the eurocrisis.

Critique on the ex cathedra pronouncement of Barroso that there is no eurocrisis

The present author finds it pertinent to express the feeling of amazement that is always born in him following an exposition to the Olympian pronouncements of the European Commission's President, Mr. José Manuel Barroso; amazement not in the sense of a positive impression, but rather as a profound bewilderment blended with an uneasiness that stems from the fact that evident truths of the empirical order of things have become the subjects of a meticulous exercise in obfuscation, whose function is to mislead and misinform and whose end is to place the ideocentric foundations for the top-down policies to come. After having abused and distorted the term "federation" and its derivatives, inwardly transforming it from a firm political position against nation states to an intergovernmental, confederalist conception where the nation state lies "at the heart" of the whole venture, Mr. Barroso has now taken it upon himself to deny the systemic aspects of the localized economic crises witnessed across the Euro Area, in propounding the well-known conservative postulate of certain powers of the establishment, that "there is no such thing as a eurocrisis". The present critique shall be forwarded against the remarks included in Mr. Barroso's speech at the State of the Union conference in Florence on May 9, 2013. On the issue of the eurocrisis qua trapping of some leftist's or "populist's" imaginary, Mr. Barroso spoke thus:

The meta ta politika of Europe

Fellow citizen Ralf Grahn (@RalfGrahn) recently suggested that European bloggers should consider producing an article under the twitter hashtag #MyEurope, in light of the commemoration of Europe Day, on the 9th of May. The idea is to invite the authors to publicize their perhaps idealized conception of Europe, of its politics in their broader sense, so as to participate in—and enrich the—public debate on the present and the future of the European Union (or of the Euro Area) and, most importantly, to provide a renewed impetus to the eurologosphere, the aggregation of all European blogs or "eurologs", to the (re-)consideration and (re-)examination of the immediate issues at hand as well as the prospects for Europe in the years ahead.

Footnotes on Jürgen Habermas' lecture in Leuven about the European crisis

On April 26 2013, I had the great honor to attend a lecture on Democracy, Solidarity, and the European Crisis by one of the foremost thinkers of our age, Professor Jürgen Habermas. The event, which can now be watched online, took place at the premises of a very important center of knowledge in Belgium, if not worldwide, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and was introduced by the President of the European Council, Mr. Herman Van Rompuy.

Europe did not cause the crisis in Cyprus

The kind of default reaction of many Cypriot opinion molders and citizens to the latest decisions on the country's macroeconomic adjustment programme, has been to put the brunt of the blame for Cyprus' economic demise on "Europe" in general; often drawing insights from valid facts such as the systemic features of the eurocrisis, stemming from the flawed architectural design of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), to the inadequate modus operandi and suboptimal decision-making processes of the inter-governmental platforms of the European Council and the informal Eurogroup. It is indeed true that the European level leaves much to be desired on several fronts that need not be enumerated herein, yet an over-emphasis on the shortcomings of the EU/Eurozone in conjunction with a meticulous downplay of the responsibilities of the symbiotic Cypriot political and plutocratic establishment, can only end up becoming, perhaps indadvertedly, an infamous apologetic to the egregious malpractices of both public and private key actors prior to the events that have taken place over the last months/years.

The independence of the European Central Bank and its democratic accountability on Cyprus

The legal basis of the European Central Bank guarantees its institutional independence in conducting monetary policy, while it also extends the separation of powers to all other central banks comprising the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). In particular, Article 130 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union states thus:

Europe: A banking union to break the feedback loop between states and banks

Perhaps the deepest flaw in the Euro edifice has been the symbiosis between banks and states. The insoluble ties that are shared by sovereigns and their domestic banks are to a great extent a permanent feature of the modern (crony-)capitalist system, yet in Europe there is a peculiarity that far transcends common knowledge of modern political economy: the bank-state collusion in the euro area, in itself a lamentable manifestation of corporatism, is couched in an institutional framework of supervision that is compartmentalized along national lines, hence offering perverse incentives to authorities to provide pampers to otherwise questionable domestic business practices, in the name of "national competitiveness", the "national interest" etc. or simply to obfuscate and hide the fact that the local economy is rather malignant compared to its European partners.

Doomsday scenarios: With capital controls in place, is Cyprus effectively outside the Euro?

As has been the case with all the other periods of duress in the 3.5 year-old eurocrisis, the case of Cyprus has provided the impetus for the cultivation of a number of doomsday scenarios regarding the fate of the Euro. One of them is that Cyprus is the first case where a country has effectively exited the euro, by virtue of the administrative measures imposing capital controls that have been introduced, which render obsolete one of the key features of a currency area and a single market, namely, unencumbered movement of capital. While I certainly am a fervent detractor of closed borders (and minds), be it in the movement of capital, goods, services or people and, while I would never support the use of the state's monopoly of coercion to protect its cronies in the corporate world and the rest of their flunkies, I nonetheless perceive of this argument on Cyprus' predicament as an exaggeration, which essentially stems from two sources: