To back up the hypothesis that the whole scheme was inspired by what I could call the "UK banking model", here is a graph of the figures that I extracted from the House of Commons report for the percentage of GDP handed over to banks in the form of interest payments on government debt since 1955.
I worked out what the average number was. It's 3.1%. A remarkably close match to the budget limit of 3.0% of GDP imposed by Maastricht.
In other words, governments are allowed to run deficits - but only enough to ensure that they can pay their dues to the commercial banks. It makes sense. Maastricht could have said that governments should aim to reduce the national debt to 0% of GDP, and aim to keep the budget deficit at 0% too. But no, we are almost encouraged to think that 60% and 3% are actually some sort of optimum.
They are - for the banks.
I also added up the numbers for the percentage of UK GDP siphoned off over the full period from 1955 to 2011. It comes to 180% of GDP.
That means that had the UK been using a sensible system in which either (a) the government runs a balanced budget, or (b) borrows any money it needs from the Central Bank at 0% interest, the UK could potentially have been massively more prosperous that it is.
Of course, you might argue that paying 3% of GDP to commercial banks every year is OK if those banks put that money back into the economy.
But my guess is that the vast majority of that money has been transfered to offshore tax havens, where it would appear that about 1/3 of the world's wealth has been stashed.
