The Eurozone crisis was wrongly blamed on sovereign fiscal profligacy

Evidence

There is just one problem with this diagnosis: it is wrong. The ongoing Eurozone crisis really has very little to do with the fiscal profligacy of periphery sovereigns, only one of which, as noted, was meaningfully profligate. There is a crisis in European sovereign debt markets; of that there is no doubt. But treating it as a crisis brought about by debt-fueled consumption and profligate state spending is to confuse correlation (they happened at the same time) with causation (out-of-control spending caused the crisis). — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 152

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the book’s thesis on the US case and connects to Blyth’s broader argument that austerity misdiagnoses private-sector crises as public-debt crises. — connects to: The sovereign debt crisis was actually a banking crisis in disguise. — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 33; The sovereign debt crisis is a transmuted and camouflaged banking crisis — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 35; The European debt crisis resulted from banking losses, not sovereign overspending — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 40 (+15 more)

Broader Connections

• The Eurozone crisis was private, not public, debt #expands (0.90) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 190
• The crisis-as-government-fault narrative was engineered to justify austerity #corroborates (0.90) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 950
• European fiscal crises were consequences of private banking crises, not their cause #expands (0.85) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 205
• Neoliberalism’s crisis strategy redirected blame from banks onto state debt #corroborates (0.85) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 475
• Austerity framed economic crisis as caused by governments and workers, not capital #corroborates (0.85) — Clara E. Mattei, The Capital Order, 783
• Pro-austerity economists refused to analyze the financial-crisis origins of state debt #corroborates (0.80) — Mark Blyth, Austerity, 470
• Neoliberal crisis responses deliberately undermine state fiscal authority #corroborates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 49