2 Jul 2015

Another solution for the Eurozone Crisis

With the Eurozone looking as if it is likely to implode, it is clear that we need some radical solutions.

Here's one that I proposed back in August 2012 ("Solving the Eurozone debt problem in a decade - or less"), but which I think is even more appropriate today. I guess there may be a few people (including Mario Draghi), who may have missed it the first time round!

The idea is simply to use the €60 billion a month that the ECB is currently pumping into the financial markets to buy up all the Eurozone Countries Public Sector Debt. But to be fair, the payments would be on a strictly per capita basis. The amount available would be divided up according to the populations of each country. Germany would get the most, because it's the biggest country.

In the table below, I give the population of each of the 18 Eurozone countries, together with total Public Sector debt at the end of 2014. I also give the per capita debt. Assuming €60 billion a month of ECB money creation, you can easily calculate the number of months necessary to completely eliminate debt.

As you can see, Estonia, which has hardly any debt, would be debt free in just 9 months.  Countries like Portugal, Cyprus, Finland and Spain would all be debt free in about 10 years.

But even Greece would be completely out of debt in about 13-14 years, only a little bit longer than countries like Germnay and the Netherlands.

My suggestion is that, as soon as the debt is paid off, the money should be given to the citizens of the debt free countries in the form of a Unconditional Basic Income. 

So, Mario. What do you think?

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