...interests are interpreted through the lens of ideas, or visions...
It is Kant versus Machiavelli. Economists have long been familiar with this kind of debate and refer to it as rules versus discretion.
...Second, up to now - in the context of a new crisis - rethinking has not proceeded very far. On the contrary, countries are following, on the whole, an approach of "business as usual" (查看原文)
The reason why the tensions between the contrasting economic philosophies came to the forefront during the euro crisis lies in a seismic power shift that occurred in two stages. The first occurred in the spring of 2010, with decision-making capacity shifting from European institutions in Brussels to the capitals of member states. (查看原文)
The second decisive moment that marked the transition from a supranational European to intergovernmental decision mechanism occurred when European governments created a new funding vehicle - which became the temporary European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and later the permanent European Stability Mechanism (ESM). (查看原文)
French and Germans are at two extremities of the moral chain, because the former consider external facts as the motor of all ideas, while the latter think that ideas generate all impressions. The two countries nevertheless are in basc agreement on social relations, but there is nothing more opposed than their respective literaray and philosophic systems. (查看原文)
Federations are mechanisms for preserving differences while minimizing conlcit, while central states repress conflict by overriding differences through the assertion of authority. Federations thus need rules as a way of dealing with substantial differences in outlook. (查看原文)
But Germany also has a substantial sector of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that are generally referred to as the Mittelstand. The small and medium-sized businesses have generally been the incubators in which middle-class dyamism developed and galvanized society as a whole. (查看原文)
Medieval and early modern Europe had two models of city. On the one side, there were the bureaucratic capitals of a large state, of which Naples was the largest sprawling example. The alternative lay in those cities dominated by mercantile activities, which were often self-governed. In these, order, justice, and harmony, couple with education and virture, transformed not only the city but also the surrounding lands. (查看原文)
The French rendition (bourgeois) captures the depth of meaning less adequately than the German term, [...] Bürger can have a universal meaning as well as a socioeconomic one, or one that refers to educational attainment. But in each case, the central meaning is clear: a Bürger is someone who is capable of self-determination, who can see the fruits of his own economic, political, cultural, or social efforts. A Bürger is not a being that is at the blind mercy of impersonal forces; rather, the Bürger makes a world on the basis of a forceful and dynamic imagination. A Bürger is above all someone who takes responsibility for his or her own actions. (查看原文)
In particular, he believed that France insisted on rules and contracts, while Germany had a feudal sense of good faith that was personalized and "mocked contracts and signatures.""The German does not have like us the sense of the permanent and absolute value of the contract." (查看原文)
1. A focus on the legal, moral, and political foundation of free markets in agreed rules [...] 2. A strong emphasis on responsibility and accountability. [...] 3. A concern with the potential for moral hazard arising out of lender of last resort activities. [...] 4. A concern that lender of last resort action may corrupt or pollute monetray policy. (trade-offs between financial sector stability vs. price stability) [...] 5. A belief that firm or binding rules are needed to shield monetary policy from fiscal dominance, namely, the view that government, by raising the permanent level of expenditures without at the same time raising taxes [...] 6. A strict approach to government debt and to debt ceillings. [...] 7. Growth is not achieved by the provision of additional money or resources but b... (查看原文)
作者: Markus Brunnermeier, Harold James, Jean-Pierre Landau isbn: 0691172927 书名: The Euro and the Battle of Ideas 页数: 448 定价: USD 35.00 出版社: Princeton University Press 出版年: 2016-8-30 装帧: Hardcover
