Yeah that is just sophistry.

2016: Incompetent elite's create a problem.

2019: Incompetent elites make it worse.

Deeper problem is part of the neoliberal revolution was popular will was to be neutered, the political process was to be neutered. So that they couldn't interfere with the the free market or oppose the power of the rentier class.

So now you have voters, politicians, and the media that see politics and policy as a game that doesn't matter. Two generations of this and people wonder why there is no competence. Big wonder!

The problems of the EU were well known among educated persons well before the Maastricht treaty was even signed.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-al...

And that's just another data point that shows incompetence.

The Maastricht treaty took away fiscal and central banking tools that governments could use and replaced them with... nothing.

That just proves my point here.

Indeed. I am agreeing with you and supporting your perspective.

One of the things I realized watching this was this stuff probably holds together in the US because.

Federal Social Insurance programs, Social security, Unemployment, food stamps, and other transfer payments. These substitute for states inability to print their own money. and set exchange rates or control the flow of capital.

The Banking system is backstopped by the Federal Reserve not individual states. See Texas and California during the S&L crisis.

And the lack of tribal attitudes. Europeans think Greeks need to pay back all the money their government borrowed from French and German Banks. No one in the US really feels that way about Puerto Ricans.

You're exactly correct. Transfer payments keep our federal union whole.

As an aside, the states actually do have de facto currency issuing power as a function of their sovereignty and taxing authority. It's rarely exercised, but it has been done. For example when California failed to pass a budget a decade ago, it started paying with IOUs that it also accepted as payment for state tax liabilities[1]. They even strong-armed banks into accepting the IOUs as deposits. The total sum was nearly $3 billion. So the states can print money.

[1] https://www.sco.ca.gov/eo_news_registeredwarrants.html

Reminded me, the EU has the power to limit the size of member states budget deficits. But this only enforced against economically weaker states. The US federal government has no such power.

I think China in the last 15 years has taken the opposite tack, demanding regional governments run large deficits and loaning them the money. Which works because, Chinese leadership can give two shits about the books.

It can be interpreted as a model example of a paradox just as easily. Depends on how you want to interpret the actors and motives.