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A zona euro dedicou mais de um terço da sua vida a um ajustamento desequilibrado, que empobreceu toda a zona. Os custos desse ajustamento recaíram quase exclusivamente sobre os países mais pobres. (…)
Tendo identificado erradamente o cerne do problema com que a crise a confrontou, a forma como a zona euro com ela tem lidado revelou-se profundamente errada, porque se concentrou sobretudo nos sintomas mais visíveis ou nas ramificações do problema, descurando a sua raiz.

– Eurocrise: uma outra perspectiva, Vítor Bento, Observador.

This enhanced Treaty-embedded role for the private finance sector led to the profligate financing of speculative activities in Greece, Spain and Ireland by German, French and British bankers before 2007. It led to the immense enrichment of the financier class; and to the sector’s co-responsibility for the inevitable financial and economic crises of 2007-15. The crisis in turn demolished the mythology of the free market. Instead financiers socialized losses and extracted government and taxpayer guarantees to protect them from risk.

– The ECB has shaken the Eurozone’s utopian foundations, Ann Pettifor, Social Europe.

Neoliberalism prospered in politics for the next 40 years, not because of what it got right about the economy (which is very little), but because of what it ignored—the capacity of the finance sector to blow a bubble that expanded for almost 40 years, until it burst in 2007. The Neoliberal model’s emphasis on making the government sector as small as possible could work while an expanding finance sector generated the money needed to fuel economic prosperity. When that bubble burst, leaving a huge overhang of private debt in its wake, Neoliberalism led not to prosperity but to a second Great Depression. The Greeks rejected that false model of capitalism on Sunday—not capitalism itself.

– Dawn of a new politics in Europe, Steve Keen, Forbes.

Os políticos europeus não nos querem revelar a dimensão dos custos financeiros, económicos, sociais e políticos da crise. Se o dissessem, teriam de admitir que uma união monetária sem uma união política e económica desemboca em crises e grandes desequilíbrios. Teriam de nos dizer que 3 a 5 biliões de euros de dívida não serão pagos de uma forma ordeira. Teriam de dizer claramente quem paga e quando. E isso é um pesadelo. [Daniel Stelter]

– Olhares sobre a crise do euro no início de 2015 – Entrevistas (Charles Wyposz, Daniel Stelter, William White), Jorge Nascimento Rodrigues, Janela na Web.

The German government spokesman Mr. Steffen Seibert told the oligarchs at Davos that Greece must “take measures so that the economic recovery continues.” And that means “holding to its prior commitments and that the new government be tied in to the reform’s achievements.” (...)
To Greeks these comments must be a cruel joke. What economic recovery? What achievements? If elections change nothing, why bother to hold them? And of course the premise is that “prior commitments must be honored” is just stubborn dogma. What SYRIZA’s victory drove home, above all, is the unanswerable point that failed policies must be changed.

– The Greek Hope, James K. Galbraith, Social Europe.

One hopes that those who understand the economics of debt and austerity, and who believe in democracy and humane values, will prevail. Whether they will remains to be seen.

– A Greek Morality Tale, Joseph Stiglitz, Social Europe.

Imagem via Quartz.