It takes a crisis to make the politically impossible possible. Under the pressure of a financial crisis the authorities take whatever steps are necessary to hold the system together, but they only do the minimum and that is soon perceived by the financial markets as inadequate. That is how one crisis leads to another. So Europe is condemned to a seemingly unending series of crises. Measures that would have worked if they had they been adopted earlier turn out to be inadequate by the time they become politically possible. This is the key to understanding the euro crisis.
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The seeds of the next crisis have already been sown by the way the authorities responded to the last crisis. They accepted the principle that countries receiving assistance should not have to pay punitive interest rates and they set up the EFSF as a fund-raising mechanism for this purpose. Had this principle been accepted in the first place, the Greek crisis would not have grown so severe. As it is, the contagion—in the form of increasing inability to pay sovereign and other debt—has spread to Spain and Italy, but those countries are not allowed to borrow at the lower, concessional rates extended to Greece. This has set them on a course that will eventually land them in the same predicament as Greece.
Die Finanzkrise der Jahre 2008-09 eröffnete die einmalige Möglichkeit, die notwendigen Reformen zur Stabilisierung der Finanzmarktarchitektur auf politischer Ebene durchzusetzen. Die öffentliche Stimmung hatte sich im Angesicht der dramatischen Lage vieler Banken zugunsten der Reformkräfte gedreht.
Die verantwortlichen Politiker haben diese Chance zur Reform leichtfertig vertan. Die getroffenen Regulierungsmaßnahmen stellen sich erwartungsgemäß als unzureichend heraus.
Für die schwelende Staatsschuldenkrise ist leider kein Mechanismus eingerichtet worden, der dazu beitragen könnte, für nachhaltige Beruhigung an den Finanzmärkten zu sorgen. Der EFSF wird nicht ausreichen, um das Worst Case Szenario abwenden zu können.
