Today an interview with Guy Verhofstadt (“GV”) was published in the Dutch financial daily (Financieel dagblag). In this interview GV indicated that he worries about Europe becoming comparable to Japan. He provided 3 radical ideas to solve this problem:
- Pan European Banking union (depositor guarantee model)
- Increase mandate ECB (increase governmental debt purchases)
- European Integration (to enable Eurobonds)
Interesting to see that GV indicates that a “Pan European Banking Union” will not cost tax payers any money, one may wonder where banks earn money from (consumers??). In addition he thinks that increasing the ECB mandate solves the European crisis, he might be confused with the difference between a Bulldozer and solving something. Perhaps he tries to get a bigger Bulldozer than the FED. And then we have European integration, again we just talk about becoming “joint and several liable” to each other’s debt. Like with the European Banking Union.
I wonder why all of his “Radical” changes are not about “debt reduction”, taking losses on bad debt and cleaning-up governmental, company and personal balance sheets. As in my opinion this is the only real solution.