Welcome to the Currency War, Part 2: Massive Euro Devaluation
BY JOHN RUBINO
As everyone knows by now, Greece, Spain and the rest of the PIIGS countries can’t fix their economies because they can’t devalue. If they were still using their old national fiat currencies, so goes the conventional wisdom, they could just mark them down by 30% and instantly see their exports surge and their deficits shrink. Et voilà, they’d once again be fully-functioning members of the global economy.
But the euro is beyond their control, leaving them with only austerity, which in this context is another word for Depression. Hence all the speculation over radical-but-suddenly-conceivable ideas like a Greek or Spanish exit, fiscal integration with Germany in charge, and eurobonds guaranteed by the eurozone as a whole.
This is all wasted effort, however, without the final piece of the puzzle: The ECB will have to flood the system with newly-created currency, which is another way of saying that the euro itself will have to be devalued.