A blog on the political, economic and social causes and implications of the crisis in the Southern periphery of the Eurozone.

I'm a political scientist working on political parties and elections, social and economic policy and political corruption, with a particular focus on Italy and Spain. For more details on my work, see CV here, and LSE homepage here. For media or consultancy enquiries, please email J.R.Hopkin@lse.ac.uk.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Bunga bunga economics

Only just noticed this great op-ed by Paul Krugman.

Apart from the great opening line 'this is the way the euro ends — not with a bang but with bunga bunga', the really interesting point is this:

"Spain and Italy in effect reduced themselves to the status of third-world countries that have to borrow in someone else’s currency, with all the loss of flexibility that implies. "

I've long believed that Europe was the main reason Italy had not ended up like Argentina. Maybe I was over-optimistic.