Läste nyligen Johan Norbergs artikel om bubblor i the Spectator. Han sammanfattar den lite självironiskt (?) på sin blogg:
In my article I explain why the Eurozone is a bubble, why the US is a bubble and why China, India and Brazil are bubbles. I only omit Japan because I ran out of space.
Som jag varit inne på tidigare tror jag han kan ha rätt om USA men jag är mer optimistisk om euroländerna. (Jag utelämnar Japan och Kina för att jag inte begriper mig på dem).
I Newsweek har jag nyligen funnit artiklar som är inne på samma spår: Stefan Theil liknar dagens Grekland med Kina 1978 (!), kört i botten av vanstyre men fast beslutet att genom reformer få ordning på ekonomin:
Call it Greece’s China moment. Like an economy run into the ground by decades of socialism, as China’s was before the country began reforms in 1978, Greece’s political and economic order had failed ... Ranked on the World Economic Forum’s Competitiveness Index as one of the most inhospitable places to do business in the Western world, Greece now has a fast-track law to push through investment projects, and is setting up one-stop offices for starting a business. An education reform modeled after that of Sweden, where Papandreou once lived, will cede central control over universities and force them to compete for students. A radical new transparency law—aimed at rooting out corruption and the Soviet-style statistical fakery that obscured the true extent of the country’s debt—could soon make Greece’s the most open government in Europe. Once the Diavgeia (“clarity”) law is fully in force in 2011, no government contract, expenditure, or administrative decision will be legally binding unless it has been made public on the Web.
Theil har vevat liknande teser det senaste året i Newsweek här:
The likely turn of events is that all this pressure on government spending will boost the cause of economic reform in Europe
och här:
viewed from 2020, this crisis could well have been the catalyst Europe needed to solve a number of problems—overspending governments, inflexible labor markets, and otherwise overregulated economies
NB: Jag kollade naturligt om den här Stefan Theil, vad jag förstår ekonomiredaktör på den europeiska Newsweek, verkar vara galen. Vissa skulle onekligen svara ja, eftersom han anklagats för att vara s k klimatförnekare och dessutom citerar Johnny Munkhammar.
Oh well...