ABSTRACT
Much now depends on whether the Eurozone monetary union survives – and at what cost. This very rigid and vulnerable system can probably continue to be propped up for as long as the relatively vast, rich and strong German economy
(one of its very few major beneficiaries) remains willing and able to underwrite it by repeatedly “bank-rolling” its weaker members. Hence, it appears that
the Eurozone monetary union can be maintained, albeit only by enforcing levels of fiscal stringency/rigidity/austerity which will continue to retard eco-
nomic growth, maintain comparatively high levels of unemployment, impose further cutbacks in services and public provisions (especially in education,
health care, housing, physical infrastructure and measures to relieve poverty and unemployment), and further impoverish the greatly expanded “reserve armies” of poor and/or unemployed persons in the EU’s most vulnerable “pe-
ripheries” and “super-peripheries”, whose governments now incur punitively high borrowing costs whenever markets lose confidence in their willingness and
capacity to “stay the course” (Bartlett and Prica 2012; Bideleux 2012; Bartlett and Uvalic 2013; Blyth 2013).
