Klein: Growth More Than Debt Key to Euromess

By Ezra Klein - Dec 7, 2011
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-08/slow-growth-more-than-debt-is-key-to-euro-mess-commentary-by-ezra-klein.html

On my blog, I tried for a while to get the term “Euromess” to catch on. Fail. The world seems to have settled on “the European debt crisis” as the accepted term for the run on sovereign bonds that’s bedeviling the euro area. So I gave in and started calling it “the European debt crisis,” too. Now I’m regretting it.
I’ve spent the last week in Germany talking to policy makers, business leaders and bankers. One thing has become clear: This isn’t a debt crisis. This is a crisis first of growth, then of institutions, and only then of debt.
It’s easy enough to prove that this is about more than debt. Let’s start with a puzzle.