Almost five years have passed since the beginning of this depression, which
started when the bankrupcy of Lehman Brothers. During that time, our economies
have been tested in all possible ways: risk premium, deflaction, unemployment
rate... But the real test has not come yet. The challenge is to rebuild our
economies around a weak system like the EU, marked by the continuous fights
between the south and the north, a non-integrated fiscal monetary system and
old political rivalries.
In the case of the Mediterranean economies we have two problems. The main
problem is to find out how to finish with this depression and the current
european policies, based on the idea of contraction equal more. The
other one is that nowadays our economies are seriously injured, because the
previous governments didn't do anything in order to achieve the growing and
competitiveness in the most important areas.
For example, let's see the spanish case: during the gold age of the spanish
economy, the different governments did policies that rose the wages on
non-technological industries, they didn't support the technological
development (despite that there are good researchers in the country) and
neither of them created an efficient banking system. As a consequence of that,
the unemployment rate, the risk premium and the fall of the banking system have
been unstoppable during this little great depression.
With these evidences, all of us are wondering about the same question over
and over again: should we give it all up in the southern countries? should we
let them collapse, through neoliberal policies, as punishment for their
behavior in the last years? No, this would be a huge mistake, because in Europe
the powerful countries need the weak countries more
than they think and vice versa, and nowadays the EU can't afford a failure.
The north needs to understand that the southern countries don't need
contractive policies that help to strangle more their economies, they need
expansive policies to solve their problems with their financial systems and
unemployment, and the south needs to understand they must reorientate
their economies to achieve more competitiveness and stability, and also, to
understand that this doesn't mean cutting off the economic and social rights.
Against the general opinion, there aren't different teams and every country
must push in the same direction because there is only a feasible direction,
otherwise, none of us will get out if this depression.
Author: Christian Corro Alvarado
Editor: Raquel Guerrero Plata
