Authors:

  • Peter Hall

Excerpt

Varieties of Capitalism in Light of the Euro Crisis. Peter Hall, August 2016, Paper, "The Euro crisis began, at least in symbolic terms, on November 5, 2009 when a new Prime Minister announced that the Greek budget deficit would be 12.7 percent of GDP, more than three times the amount projected for that year by the outgoing government. This sparked a crisis of confidence in sovereign debt and European banks that forced Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus into torturous negotiations with the European Union, followed by bail-out programs that imposed various combinations of fiscal austerity and structural reform on them. Almost seven years later, the effects of the crisis are still palpable. The Greek economy has lost a quarter of its value; levels of unemployment are close to 20 percent in parts of southern Europe; and the average level of economic activity in the Eurozone as a whole has only now regained its level before the global financial crisis of 2008-09." Link