The Great Abdication By PAUL KRUGMAN

Among economists who know their history, the mere mention of certain years evokes shivers. For example, three years ago Christina Romer, then the head of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, warned politicians not to re-enact 1937 — the year F.D.R. shifted, far too soon, from fiscal stimulus to austerity, plunging the recovering economy back into recession. Unfortunately, this advice was ignored.

But now I’m hearing more and more about an even more fateful year. Suddenly normally calm economists are talking about 1931, the year everything fell apart.

It started with a banking crisis in a small European country (Austria). Austria tried to step in with a bank rescue — but the spiraling cost of the rescue put the government’s own solvency in doubt. Austria’s troubles shouldn’t have been big enough to have large effects on the world economy, but in practice they created a panic that spread around the world. Sound familiar?

The really crucial lesson of 1931, however, was about the dangers of policy abdication. Stronger European governments could have helped Austria manage its problems. Central banks, notably the Bank of France and the Federal Reserve, could have done much more to limit the damage. But nobody with the power to contain the crisis stepped up to the plate; everyone who could and should have acted declared that it was someone else’s responsibility.

And it’s happening again, both in Europe and in America.

Consider first how European leaders have been handling the banking crisis in Spain. (Forget about Greece, which is pretty much a lost cause; Spain is where the fate of Europe will be decided.) Like Austria in 1931, Spain has troubled banks that desperately need more capital, but the Spanish government now, like Austria’s government then, faces questions about its own solvency.

So what should European leaders — who have an overwhelming interest in containing the Spanish crisis — do? It seems obvious that European creditor nations need, one way or another, to assume some of the financial risks facing Spanish banks. No, Germany won’t like it — but with the very survival of the euro at stake, a bit of financial risk should be a small consideration.

But no. Europe’s “solution” was to lend money to the Spanish government, and tell that government to bail out its own banks. It took financial markets no time at all to figure out that this solved nothing, that it just put Spain’s government more deeply in debt. And the European crisis is now deeper than ever.

Yet let’s not ridicule the Europeans, since many of our own policy makers are acting just as irresponsibly. And I’m not just talking about Congressional Republicans, who often seem as if they are deliberately trying to sabotage the economy.

Let’s talk instead about the Federal Reserve. The Fed has a so-called dual mandate: it’s supposed to seek both price stability and full employment. And last week the Fed released its latest set of economic projections, showing that it expects to fail on both parts of its mandate, with inflation below target and unemployment far above target for years to come.

This is a terrible prospect, and the Fed knows it. Ben Bernanke, the Fed’s chairman, has warned in particular about the damage being done to America by the unprecedented level of long-term unemployment.

So what does the Fed propose doing about the situation? Almost nothing. True, last week the Fed announced some actions that would supposedly boost the economy. But I think it’s fair to say that everyone at all familiar with the situation regards these actions as pathetically inadequate — the bare minimum the Fed could do to deflect accusations that it is doing nothing at all.

Why won’t the Fed act? My guess is that it’s intimidated by those Congressional Republicans, that it’s afraid to do anything that might be seen as providing political aid to President Obama, that is, anything that might help the economy. Maybe there’s some other explanation, but the fact is that the Fed, like the European Central Bank, like the U.S. Congress, like the government of Germany, has decided that avoiding economic disaster is somebody else’s responsibility.

None of this should be happening. As in 1931, Western nations have the resources they need to avoid catastrophe, and indeed to restore prosperity — and we have the added advantage of knowing much more than our great-grandparents did about how depressions happen and how to end them. But knowledge and resources do no good if those who possess them refuse to use them.

And that’s what seems to be happening. The fundamentals of the world economy aren’t, in themselves, all that scary; it’s the almost universal abdication of responsibility that fills me, and many other economists, with a growing sense of dread.

Esta vez, Europa está de verdad al borde del precipicio

¿Queda un minuto para la medianoche en Europa? Nos tememos que la política del Gobierno alemán de hacer algo que sirve ya de poco y llega demasiado tarde corre el riesgo de provocar precisamente una repetición de la crisis de mitad del siglo XX que la integración europea pretendía evitar. Nos resulta extraordinario que sea Alemania, precisamente, la que parezca no haber aprendido de la historia. Obsesionada con la inexistente amenaza de la inflación, da la impresión de que la Alemania actual otorga más importancia al año 1923 (el año de la hiperinflación) que a 1933 (el año en que murió la democracia). A los alemanes no les vendría mal recordar que una crisis bancaria europea ocurrida dos años antes de 1933 contribuyó de forma directa a la descomposición de la democracia, no solo en su propio país, sino en todo el continente. Llevamos más de tres años advirtiendo de que Europa continental necesitaba limpiar los lamentables balances de sus bancos. No hicieron prácticamente nada. Mientras tanto, desde hace dos años se está extendiendo un pánico silencioso entre los bancos de la periferia de la eurozona: se han reducido los servicios financieros transfronterizos, interbancarios y generales, y se han sustituido por financiación del BCE; y el dinero inteligente —grandes depósitos no asegurados de personas con altos ingresos— ha abandonado las costas de Grecia y otros bancos mediterráneos. Pero ahora el público está perdiendo la confianza, y el pánico puede extenderse a depósitos sin asegurar más pequeños. Si Grecia saliera del euro, se produciría una congelación de depósitos, y los depósitos en euros se convertirían en nuevos dracmas: por tanto, un euro en un banco griego no equivale a un euro en un banco alemán. Los griegos han retirado más de 700 millones de euros de sus bancos en el último mes. Más preocupante es que el mes pasado también hubo un aumento de las retiradas de dinero de algunos bancos españoles. La torpe operación de rescate de Bankia llevada a cabo por el Gobierno solo ha servido para incrementar la inquietud de la población. En una visita reciente a Barcelona, a uno de nosotros le preguntaron varias veces si era seguro tener dinero en un banco español. Este tipo de proceso puede ser explosivo. Lo que hoy es una tranquila visita al banco puede convertirse en una carrera de sálvese quien pueda. Si se produjera la salida de Grecia, las personas racionales se preguntarían: ¿quién va a continuación? Como se debatió en una reunión del Nicolas Berggruen Institute celebrada la semana pasada en Roma, la forma de salir de esta crisis parece clara. Resulta extraordinario que sea Alemania la que parezca no haber aprendido de la historia En primer lugar, es preciso establecer un programa de recapitalización —mediante acciones preferentes sin derecho a voto— de los bancos de la eurozona, tanto en la periferia como en el centro, directa a través del Instrumento Europeo de Estabilidad Financiera (IEEF) y su sucesor, el Mecanismo de Estabilidad Financiera (MEE). La estrategia actual de recapitalizar los bancos a base de que los Estados pidan prestado a los mercados nacionales de bonos —o al IEEF— ha resultado desastrosa en Irlanda y Grecia: ha provocado una explosión de deuda pública y ha hecho que el Estado fuera todavía más insolvente, al tiempo que los bancos se convierten en un riesgo mayor en la medida en que más parte de la deuda pública está en sus manos. Segundo, para evitar el pánico en los bancos de la eurozona —un fenómeno seguro en el caso de salida de Grecia y muy probable en cualquier caso— es necesario crear un sistema europeo de garantía de depósitos. Con el fin de reducir el riesgo subjetivo (además del riesgo del precio de las acciones y el riesgo crediticio asumidos por los contribuyentes de la eurozona), también habría que tomar otras medidas: 1. El programa de garantía de depósitos debe financiarse con los gravámenes bancarios apropiados: podría ser un impuesto de transacciones financieras o, mejor aún, un impuesto sobre todos los pasivos bancarios. 2. Es necesario poner en práctica un programa de resolución bancaria en el que los acreedores no asegurados —tanto mayoritarios como minoritarios— sean los primeros que paguen, antes de recurrir al dinero de los contribuyentes para cubrir las pérdidas de un banco. 3. Deben tomarse medidas para limitar el tamaño de los bancos con el fin de evitar el problema de las entidades demasiado grandes para caer. 4. También somos partidarios de un sistema de supervisión y regulación para toda la UE. Un euro en un banco griego no equivale a un euro en un banco alemán Es cierto que el fondo europeo de garantía de depósitos no funcionará si existe el riesgo continuo de que un país se salga de la eurozona. Garantizar los depósitos en euros sería muy caro, porque el país en cuestión necesitaría convertir toda la deuda a una nueva moneda nacional, que enseguida se depreciaría respecto al euro. Por otra parte, si el seguro de depósito solo tiene validez mientras el país no abandone el euro, será incapaz de impedir un pánico bancario. Por consiguiente, es necesario tomar más medidas para reducir las probabilidades de que se produzcan abandonos de la eurozona. Hay que acelerar las reformas estructurales que estimulan el crecimiento de la productividad. Entre las políticas que pueden conseguirlo están una mayor flexibilización monetaria por parte del BCE, un euro más débil, algún estímulo fiscal en el núcleo duro, más gasto en infraestructuras que reduzcan los cuellos de botella y faciliten el abastecimiento en la periferia (a ser posible, con una regla de oro para las inversiones públicas) e incrementos salariales por encima de la productividad en el centro para impulsar los ingresos y el consumo. Por último, dado el volumen insostenible de las deudas públicas y los costes de endeudamiento de varios Estados miembros, no vemos alternativa posible a algún tipo de mutualización de la deuda. En la actualidad existen varias propuestas de eurobonos. Entre ellas, la que preferimos es la de un Fondo Europeo de Redención que hace el Consejo Alemán de Asesores Económicos, no porque sea la mejor, sino porque es la única capaz de aliviar la inquietud alemana sobre la perspectiva de asumir un riesgo crediticio excesivo. El FER es un programa provisional que no derivará en un sistema de eurobonos permanentes. Cuenta con los avales suficientes y la antigüedad adecuada, además de tener unas condiciones muy firmes. El principal peligro es que cualquier propuesta que sea aceptable para Alemania supondría tal pérdida de soberanía fiscal para los Estados que sería inaceptable para a periferia de la eurozona, en especial Italia y España. Ceder parte de la soberanía es inevitable. Sin embargo, existe una diferencia entre federalismo y neocolonialismo, como nos dijo un veterano político en la reunión del NBI en Roma. Dado el volumen insostenible de las deudas, no vemos alternativa posible a algún tipo de mutualización Hasta hace poco, la postura de Alemania sobre estas propuestas ha sido siempre negativa. Es comprensible la preocupación alemana sobre el riesgo subjetivo. Será difícil de justificar el hecho de que se ha arriesgado el dinero de los alemanes si en la periferia no se llevan a cabo unas reformas sustanciales. Pero es inevitable que esas reformas tarden aún cierto tiempo. La reforma estructural del mercado de trabajo alemán no fue precisamente un éxito de la noche a la mañana. Por el contrario, la crisis bancaria europea es un riesgo financiero que podría dispararse en cuestión de días. Los alemanes deben comprender que la recapitalización bancaria, el seguro europeo de depósitos y la mutualización de la deuda no son opcionales. Son medidas esenciales para evitar una desintegración irreversible de la unión monetaria europea. Si todavía no están convencidos, deben entender que los costes de la ruptura de la eurozona serían astronómicos, para Alemania tanto como para el resto del mundo. Al fin y al cabo, la prosperidad actual de Alemania es en gran parte una consecuencia de la unión monetaria. El euro ha dado a los exportadores alemanes un tipo de cambio mucho más competitivo que el viejo marco. Y el resto de la eurozona sigue siendo el destino del 42% de las exportaciones alemanas. Sumir a la mitad de ese mercado en una depresión no puede ser beneficioso para Alemania. A la hora de la verdad, como reconoció la canciller Merkel la semana pasada, la unión monetaria siempre tuvo implícita en ella una mayor integración en una unión fiscal y política. Pero antes de que Europa piense en dar este paso histórico, debe demostrar que ha aprendido las lecciones del pasado. La UE se creó para no repetir los desastres de los años treinta. Ya es hora de que los dirigentes europeos —y en especial los alemanes— sean conscientes de que están peligrosamente cerca de caer en ello. Niall Ferguson es catedrático de la Universidad de Harvard; su último libro es Civilización: Occidente y el resto. Nouriel Roubini es catedrático en la Universidad de Nueva York y presidente de Roubini Global Economics. Ambos son miembros del Consejo para el Futuro de Europa del Nicolas Berggruen Institute.

Paul Krugman: 'I'm sick of being Cassandra. I'd like to win for once' | Business | The Guardian

By now you will probably have read an awful lot about the financial crisis. Perhaps I've been reading all the wrong stuff, but until now I hadn't managed to find answers to the most puzzling questions. If the crash of 2008 was preceded by an era of unprecedented prosperity, how come most of the people I know weren't earning much? Deregulation of financial services was supposed to have made us all better off, so why did most of us have to live off credit to keep up? Now that it has all gone wrong, and everyone agrees we're in the worst crisis since the Great Depression, why aren't we following the lessons we learned in the 1930s? President Obama is the only world leader who has attempted a Keynesian stimulus programme. Why has it been only minimally effective? Why do most other western leaders still insist the only way out is to tighten our belts and pay off our debts, when that clearly isn't working either? And how come the bankers, credit agencies and bond traders are still treated with cowed reverence – don't frighten the markets! – when they got us into this mess? These mysteries were beginning to make me feel as if I must be going mad – but since reading Paul Krugman's new book, I fear I'm in danger instead of becoming a bore. It's the sort of book you wish were compulsory reading, and want to quote to anyone who'll listen, because End This Depression Now! provides a comprehensive narrative of how we have ended up doing the opposite of what logic and history tell us we must do to get out of this crisis. Its author is a Nobel prize-winning economist who writes a column in the New York Times and teaches economics at Princeton University. An authority on John Maynard Keynes, Krugman wrote a book in 1999 called The Return of Depression Economics, largely about the Japanese slump, which drew ominous parallels between Japan's economic strategy and the pre-New Deal policies of the early 30s that turned a recession into catastrophic depression. At the time, unsurprisingly, most western economists weren't bowled over; in thrall to the seemingly endless boom, the Great Depression looked to them to be more or less irrelevant. Krugman's latest book will be much harder to ignore. He doesn't expect it will be an easy message to sell, though. "As far as I can make out, the serious opposition to the coalition's policy is basically a half-dozen economists, and it looks as if I'm one of them – which is really weird," he laughs, "since I'm not even here." Visiting London last week, he met lots of what he calls Very Serious People: "And there are lots of things these people say that sound very wise and sensible. But it's all upside-down; it's all wrong. Yet the power of their orthodoxy – even when it's failing – is quite awesome." These Very Serious People present economics as a morality play, in which debt is a sin, and we have all sinned, so now we must all pay the price by tightening our belts together. They tell us the crisis will take a long time to resolve, and must inevitably be painful. All of this, according to Krugman, is the opposite of the truth. Austerity is a self-imposed collective punishment that is not just unnecessary, but won't work. We know what would work – but for complex political and historical reasons that his book explores, we have chosen to forget. "Ending this depression," he writes, "should be, could be, almost incredibly easy. So why aren't we doing it?" Krugman offers the example of a babysitting co-op, or circle, in which parents are issued with vouchers they can exchange for babysitting hours. If all of the parents simultaneously decide to save their vouchers, the system will grind to a halt. "My spending is your income, and your spending is my income. If both of us try to slash our spending at the same time, then we are also slashing our incomes, so we don't actually end up saving more." We could issue more vouchers to everyone, to make them feel "richer" and encourage them to spend – which would be the circle's equivalent of quantitative easing. But if everyone is determined to save, the parents will hold on to the extra vouchers, and the circle still won't work. This is what's called a liquidity trap, "and it's essentially where we are now". The same principles apply to the "paradox of deleverage". Debt in itself is not a terrible thing, he says. "Debt is one person's liability, but another person's asset. So it doesn't impoverish us necessarily. The real danger with debt is what happens if lots of people decide, or are forced, to pay it off at the same time. High debt levels make us vulnerable to a crisis – and this is when you get the self-destructive spiral of debt deflation. If both of us are trying to pay down our debt at the same time, we end up with lower incomes, so the ratio of our debt to our income goes up." Crucially, Krugman continues, "what's true for an individual is not true for society as a whole". The analogy between a household budget and a national economy is "seductive, because it's very easy for people to relate to", and it makes some sense when we're not in the grip of a macro-economic crisis. "But when we are, then individually rational behaviour adds up to a collectively disastrous result. It ends up that each individual trying to improve his or her position has the collective effect of making everybody worse off. And that's the story of our times." At these moments someone has to start spending – and, Krugman argues, it is the government. But we're endlessly being told by the coalition that it has to pay off its debts because servicing the interest is ruinous, and the bond markets will destroy us unless we're seen to be tackling the deficit. "Well, now. We know that advanced economies with stable governments that borrow in their own currency are capable of running up very high levels of debt without crisis. And we know it, actually, best of all from the history of the UK – which spent much of the 20th century, including the 30s, with debt levels much higher than it has now." But what about bond markets? Invoked as global bogeymen, we're warned that they punish governments who fail to cut spending – even if cuts don't reduce the deficit. I've never understood why the markets should care how and when we reduce the deficit, as long as we can pay our way. According to Krugman, they don't. "That's the interesting thing. The actual verdict of the markets, for countries that have their own currencies, has been that they don't really care at all in terms of what you're doing in short-run policy." Likewise, the danger of being downgraded by a credit rating agency has been wildly overstated. "We saw it in Japan in 2002; they had the downgrade, and nothing happened. Which led us to predict that would happen for the US," whose credit rating was downgraded by one agency last year. "And it was exactly right. Nothing happened." A breadline in the US in 1930. According to Krugman, our governments have failed to learn the lessons of the Great Depression. Photograph: American Stock Archive/Getty Images Thus far, Krugman has essentially restated the case for Keynesianism. "And these are not hard concepts, actually. It's not hard to get it across to an audience. But it doesn't seem to play in the political sphere." What's fascinating is his historical analysis of why policy-makers, who once understood these principles, collectively decided to forget them. In the years following the Great Depression, governments imposed regulatory rules upon the banking system to ensure that we could never again become indebted enough to make us vulnerable to a crisis. "But if it's been a long time since the last major economic crisis, people get careless about debt; they forget the risks. Bankers go to politicians and say: 'We don't need these pesky regulations,' and the politicians say: 'You're right – nothing bad has happened for a while.'" That process began in earnest in 1980, under President Reagan. One by one the regulations on banking were lifted, until "we lost the safeguards, and it meant there was an increasingly wild and woolly financial system willing to lend lots of money". Politicians were in part persuaded to deregulate by the argument that it would make us all richer. And to this day, "there's this very widespread belief that there was, in fact, a great acceleration in growth. But this really isn't hard. You sit down for a minute with the national account statistics, and you see it ain't so." If we divide the period between the second world war and 2008 into two halves, "the first half is a really dramatic improvement to living standards, and the second half is not." It was certainly dramatic for the top 0.01%, who saw a seven-fold increase in income; in 2006, for example, the 25 highest-paid hedge fund managers in America earned $14bn, three times the combined salaries of New York City's 80,000 school teachers. But between 1980 and the crash, the median US household income went up by only roughly 20%. "So it's a total disconnect." Why would economists claim ordinary people were getting much richer if they weren't? "The answer, I think, has to be that you need to ask: 'Well who are the people who say these things hanging out with? What is their social circle?' And if you're a finance professor at the University of Chicago, the people that you're likely to meet from the alleged real world are going to be people from Wall Street – for whom the past 30 years have, in fact, been wonderful. If you're a mover and shaker in the UK, you're probably hanging out with people from the City. I think that is the story of the disconnect." But the influence of the top 0.01%'s mindboggling wealth didn't stop at finance professors. Their mansions and yachts and luxury lifestyles created "expenditure cascades", whereby, "if you're a little bit down the income distribution from there, you're going to feel some compulsion to match some of that too. And then, in turn, the people below you can feel some compulsion too." There were early warning signs, such as the savings and loans crisis of the late 80s, that should have alerted politicians to the dangers of financial deregulation, moral hazard and subsequent spiralling debt. But by then Wall Street's influence over policy-makers had rendered them deaf to alarm bells – in part because bankers were financing so many politicians' campaigns. Krugman quotes Upton Sinclair's famous observation: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it" – but more than that, he suspects the sheer glamour of wealthy bankers had a powerful influence over politicians. "My impression is that old style captains of industry can be rather boring. I'm not sure how much thrill there is in hanging out with someone like that. But Wall Street people are in fact very smart; they're funny, they're not company men who work their way up the chain. They're impressive." Even Obama is not immune to their charms, says Krugman. Early into the administration he met the president and his economics team, "and it was just clear that rumpled professors with beards just didn't come across as being so impressive. Yeah," he chuckles. "I had that definite sense." But even many of the rumpled professors had been seduced by the promise of a new world economic order, in which Keynesianism was not just redundant but faintly ridiculous. By 1970, Krugman writes, "discussion of investor irrationality, of bubbles, of destructive speculation had virtually disappeared from academic discourse. The field was dominated by the 'efficient-markets hypothesis'," which persuaded economists that: "We should put the capital development of the nation in the hands of what Keynes called a 'casino'." The death of Keynesianism was "triumphantly" announced, largely by Republican economists whose work had become "infected by partisanship and political orientation". Now, as they are faced with the catastrophic collapse of their theories, Krugman thinks political bias and professional pride are what's stopping them admitting they were wrong. Those economists cite the woefully limited impact of Obama's almost $800bn stimulus package as proof that they are still right. According to Krugman, the only thing wrong was it wasn't enough. Almost half went on tax cuts, and most of the remaining $500bn went on unemployment benefits, food stamps and so on. "Actual infrastructure spending – that's more like just $100bn. So if your image of the stimulus programme is: 'We're going out there and building lots of bridges' – that never happened." In an economy that produces $15tn worth of goods and services each year, $500m "is just not a big number". Back in 2009, Krugman had warned: "By going with a half-baked stimulus, you're going to discredit the idea of stimulus without saving the economy." And that, he sighs, "is exactly what happened. Unfortunately it was one of those predictions that I wish I'd been wrong about. But it was dead on." Since the crash Krugman has become the undisputed Cassandra of academia, but he jokes: "I'm kind of sick of being Cassandra. I'd like to actually win for once, instead of being vindicated by the disaster coming – as predicted. I'd like to see my arguments about preventing the disaster taken into account instead." The likelihood of that is a fascinating question. Krugman is not the most clubbable of fellows. In person he's quite offhand, an odd mixture of shy and intensely self-assured, and with his stocky build and salt-and-pepper beard he conveys the impression of a very clever badger, burrowing away in the undergrowth of economic detail, ready to give quite a sharp bite if you get in his way. His public criticisms of the Obama administration have upset many Democrats in the US, while his more vociferous criticisms of George Bush used to earn him death threats from angry rightwingers. I hope none of that gets in the way of his argument. What we need to do, Krugman says, is simple: ditch austerity, kickstart the economy with ambitious government spending, and bring down the deficit when we're back above water again. Most importantly of all, we need to do it now. "Five years of very high unemployment do vastly more than five times as much damage as one year of high unemployment. To say: 'Yes, it's painful, but time does heal these things … " He breaks off and sighs in despair. "Well, no. Time may not heal it."

La amenaza de la amnesia alemana.

La situación de Europa es grave, muy grave. ¿Quién habría pensado que el primer ministro británico, David Cameron, haría un llamamiento a los gobiernos de la zona del euro para que se armaran de valor a fin de crear una unión fiscal (con un presupuesto y una política fiscal comunes y una deuda pública garantizada en común)? Y Cameron sostiene también que la única forma de detener la desintegración del euro es una mayor integración política. ¡Un primer ministro británico conservador! La casa europea está ardiendo y Downing Street hace un llamamiento en pro de una reacción racional y resuelta por parte del cuerpo de bomberos. Lamentablemente, el cuerpo de bomberos está dirigido por Alemania y su jefe es la canciller Angela Merkel. A consecuencia de ello, Europa sigue intentando apagar el fuego con gasolina —la austeridad impuesta por Alemania—, con lo que, en tan sólo tres años, la crisis financiera de la zona del euro ha llegado a convertirse en una crisis existencial europea. No nos engañemos: si se desintegra el euro, lo mismo ocurrirá a la Unión Europea (la mayor economía del mundo), lo que desencadenará una crisis económica mundial que la mayoría de las personas vivas actualmente nunca han padecido. Europa está al borde del abismo y sin duda caerá en él, a no ser que Alemania —y Francia— cambien de rumbo. Ahora los alemanes deben preguntarse si ellos, que han sido quienes más se han beneficiado de la integración europea, están dispuestos a pagar el precio que entraña o preferirían dejarla fracasar Las recientes elecciones celebradas en Francia y en Grecia, junto con las locales en Italia y la continua zozobra existente en España e Irlanda, han mostrado que el público ha perdido la fe en la estricta austeridad que les ha impuesto Alemania. La cura de caballo de Merkel ha chocado con la realidad… y la democracia. Una vez más estamos aprendiendo a base de palos que, cuando se aplica en plena crisis financiera grave, esa clase de austeridad sólo conduce a la depresión. Esa idea debería haber sido dominante; al fin y al cabo, fue una enseñanza fundamental que se desprendió de las políticas de austeridad del presidente Herbert Hoover en Estados Unidos y del canciller Heinrich Brüning en la Alemania de Weimar a comienzos de los años treinta del siglo pasado. Lamentablemente, Alemania, precisamente ella, parece haberla olvidado. A consecuencia de ello, el caos se cierne sobre Grecia, como también la perspectiva de pánicos bancarios posteriores en España, Italia y Francia… y con ello una avalancha financiera que enterraría a Europa. ¿Y después? ¿Acaso debemos desechar lo que más de dos generaciones de europeos han creado: una inversión en masa en una construcción institucional que ha brindado el período más largo de paz y prosperidad en la historia del continente? Una cosa es segura: la desintegración del euro y de la UE entrañaría la salida de Europa del escenario mundial. La política actual de Alemania es tanto más absurda en vista de las graves consecuencias políticas y económicas que afrontaría. Corresponde a Alemania y a Francia, a Merkel y al presidente François Hollande, decidir el futuro de nuestro continente. La salvación de Europa depende ahora de un cambio fundamental en la posición en materia de política económica de Alemania y de la de Francia en materia de integración política y reformas estructurales. Francia tendrá que aceptar una unión política: un gobierno común con control parlamentario común para la zona del euro. Los gobiernos nacionales de la zona del euro ya están actuando al unísono como gobierno de facto para abordar la crisis. Se debe llevar adelante y formalizar lo que está llegando a ser cada vez más cierto en la práctica. Por su parte, Alemania tendrá que optar por una unión fiscal. En última instancia, eso significa garantizar la supervivencia de la zona del euro con la fuerza y los activos económicos de Alemania: adquisición ilimitada de bonos estatales de los países en crisis por parte del Banco Central Europeo, europeízación de las deudas nacionales mediante eurobonos y programas de crecimiento para evitar una depresión en la zona del euro e impulsar su recuperación. Podemos imaginar fácilmente cómo se despotrica en Alemania contra esa clase de programa. ¡Aún más deuda! ¡Pérdida de control de nuestros activos! ¡Inflación! Sencillamente, ¡no funciona! Pero sí que funciona: el crecimiento de Alemania, basado en la exportación, se debe a esa clase de programas precisamente en los países en ascenso y los Estados Unidos. Si China y EE.UU. no hubieran bombeado dinero financiado en parte con deuda en sus economías a comienzos de 2009, la economía alemana habría recibido un golpe muy duro. Ahora los alemanes deben preguntarse si ellos, que han sido quienes más se han beneficiado de la integración europea, están dispuestos a pagar el precio que entraña o preferirían dejarla fracasar. Además de la unificación fiscal y política y políticas de crecimiento a corto plazo, los europeos necesitan urgentemente reformas estructurales encaminadas a restablecer la competitividad de Europa. Cada uno de esos pilares es necesario para que Europa supere su crisis existencial. ¿Entendemos nosotros, los alemanes, nuestra responsabilidad paneuropea? Desde luego, no lo parece. De hecho, raras veces ha estado Alemania tan aislada como ahora. Prácticamente nadie entiende nuestra dogmática política de austeridad, que contradice toda experiencia, y se considera que hemos perdido el rumbo en gran medida, o que vamos como en un coche en dirección contraria a la del tráfico. Aún no es demasiado tarde para cambiar de dirección, pero ahora sólo nos quedan días y semanas, tal vez meses, en lugar de años. Alemania se destruyó a sí misma –y el orden europeo– en dos ocasiones en el siglo XX y después convenció a Occidente de que había sacado las conclusiones oportunas. Sólo de ese modo, reflejado con la mayor claridad en su aceptación del proyecto europeo, obtuvo Alemania la anuencia para su reunificación. Sería a un tiempo trágico e irónico que una Alemania restaurada por medios pacíficos y con la mejor de las intenciones provocara la ruina del orden europeo por tercera vez. Joschka Fischer, ministro de Asuntos Exteriores y Vicecanciller de Alemania de 1998 a 2005, fue un dirigente del Partido Verde alemán durante casi veinte años. © Project Syndicate 2012. Traducido del inglés por Carlos Manzano