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Comment by vishnugupta | Hacker News Reader

> As long as a country cannot print usd itself, this is a fast shortcut to unemployment, hunger, etc...

We don’t even need to make up hypothetical examples. We have a live one in Greece. The Greek citizens went through this exact ordeal for the exact reason you stated. They couldn’t print EUR and the ECB wouldn’t extent monetary support to Greek government.

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The Greek citizens went through this because the Greek government has been lying for many years in its financial reports.

Lol found the German

Is the assertion wrong? Cursory, recent research and my own recollection matches with the comment you were responding to.

https://www.ft.com/content/33b0a48c-ff7e-11de-8f53-00144feab...

I think the real reason is that Greece was more or less forced by the EU to accept austerity and a bad loan it can't possibly repay. The leadup to this was irrelevant.

I agree.

Both can be true (and are).

They were eventually given the right to “print” EUR. One of the many problems with the euro system that periphery countries have unfortunately been subjected too.

Wait - so why are other countries like Germany in the EU fine despite also not being able to arbitrarily issue their own national fiat currency?

They are not. Germany is a net exporter, obviously not all the countries can be net exporter at the same time.

You can't have a stable monetary union without a fiscal capacity. The inevitable debt crisis in the Euro-zone are stopped by the ECB buying debt in the secondary markets.

The hypocrisy of the system is obvious to however takes the time to see how it works.

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