Why Greece joined the Euro

The roots of Greece’s crisis are simple. Before Greece joined the Eurozone, investors treated it as a middle-income country with poor governance — which is to say, a credit risk.

After Greece joined the Eurozone, investors thought that Greece was no longer a credit risk — they figured, if push came to shove, other Eurozone members like Germany would bail Greece out. They were wrong.

Michael Dooley put forward a theory of speculative attacks on currencies as insurance attacks on currencies for emerging markets after the East Asian financial crisis:

First generation models of speculative attacks show that apparently random speculative attacks on policy regimes can be fully consistent with rational and well-informed speculative behaviour.

Unfortunately, models driven by a conflict between exchange rate policy and other macroeconomic objectives do not seem consistent with important empirical regularities surrounding recent crises in emerging markets. This has generated considerable interest in models that associate crises with self-fulfilling shifts in private expectations.

In this paper we develop a first generation model based on an alternative policy conflict. Credit constrained governments accumulate reserve assets in order to self-insure against shocks to national consumption. Governments also insure poorly regulated domestic financial markets.

Given this policy regime, a variety of internal and external shocks generate capital inflows to emerging markets followed by successful and anticipated speculative attacks.

We argue that a common external shock generated capital inflows to emerging markets in Asia and Latin America after 1989. Country specific factors determined the timing of speculative attacks. Lending policies of industrial country governments and international organizations account for contagion, that is, a bunching of attacks over time.

His model was not within the context of a currency union but his basic theory is correct.

There are speculative attacks on a currency or a bank run after foreign markets revises their estimates of the available central bank reserves and international lines of credit to bail out the banking systems and/or foreign debt.

Michael Dooley was dealing with the emerging economies of Southeast Asia and their official lines of credit that insure their foreign exchange liabilities and domestic banking system. Greece is about lines of credit for similar purposes to other European union member states.

via 12 charts and maps that explain the Greek crisis – Vox and The Most Important Graphs of 2011 – The Atlantic.

Moving Brad DeLong’s Time Machine behind John Rawls’ veil of ignorance

Brad DeLong set up a thought experiment to work out if we were better off than in the good old days. He asked how much money would you want to take with you if you had to step into a time machine to go back to some specific point in time and not be worse off for the trip in living standards and life expectancy. He was writing in 1995, talking about going back to 1895.

John Rawls asks a similar question by saying what type of society would you to agree to in a social contract if you’re behind a veil of ignorance. You didn’t know where you were going to be in society behind the veil of ignorance.

All you know you is you will be some random member of that society, at the top, bottom or somewhere in between.

…no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like.

What social institutions would you agree in that society given you don’t know where you will be in it?

John Rawls also said that the society was fair if you didn’t mind showing up somewhere in it as a random member.

Let’s suppose a thought experiment which combines a time machine with a veil of ignorance:

  • Alien proctologists from outer space take time off from kidnapping rednecks at closing time at pubs to kidnap you instead;
  • After probing your nether regions, but before flying off to light years away where they came from without any further earthly contact they offer you the option of beaming back to where you came from but with a twist in time;
  • You can beam back to be a random member of your current society or a random member of a society in the past of your choice; but
  • Random reassignment to either the present or a past of your choosing are your only options as the alien kidnap victim.

Behind that inter-temporal veil of ignorance, would you choose to be a random member of your own society or prefer to beam back in time to before the ravages of neoliberalism destroyed the good old days?

Apparently, we not a cent better off compared to the 70s because all the income gains, every single cent, went into the pockets of the top 10%, if Senator Warren is to be believed in her recent Washington post op-ed:

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When you line up by Senator Warren to go into the time machine, remember to leave your iPhones and air points at the door.

Legal systems and property rights in Greece and Russia – Index of Economic Freedom rankings compared

Figure 1: Index of Economic Freedom rankings for legal systems and property rights, Greece, Russia and USA, 2012

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Source: Economic Freedom of the World – Annual Report 2014 | www.freetheworld.com.

Overall, there are not that many differences between Greece and Russia in the quality of their legal systems and property rights. Don’t go to the police in Russia and good luck trying to enforce contracts in Greece.

@MaxCRoser only one line in this chart about India matters

John Rawls on the limits of inequality

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John Rawls defines a just society

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A blow to Director’s Law?

…the poorest 30 percent of households receive significantly more in cash benefits than they pay in tax. The next 10 percent receive on average £596 pounds a year more in cash benefits than they pay in tax, and the top 60 percent all pay more in tax than they get back in cash benefits.

Nozick on the lure of normative sociology

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Political donors back winners just before they start winning

Countries where you become a citizen just by being born there

Ed Glaeser on the dangers of soft paternalism

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Dealing with the Spanish bureaucracy

The different types of authoritarian personalities

Tom Sargent keynote address Emergency Economic Summit for Greece (1 June 2015)

HL Mencken on the Harmful Digital Communication Bill

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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.