Can Europe be Saved? Yes it can, says Jamie Galbraith

Jamie explains the relevance of the Modest Proposal (co-authored with Yanis Varoufakis and Stuart Holland). There is an alternative!

The fulcrum of the Modest Proposal is an public investment-led recovery. In their words:

The Investment-led Recovery and Convergence Programme (IRCP) will be co-financed by bonds issued jointly by the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Investment Fund (EIF). The EIB has a remit to invest in health, education, urban renewal, urban environment, green technology and green power generation, while the EIF both can co-finance EIB investment projects and should finance a European Venture Capital Fund, which was part of its original design. A key principle of this proposal is that investment in these social and environmental domains should be europeanised. Borrowing for such investments should not count on national debt anymore than US Treasury borrowing counts on the debt of California or Delaware. The under-recognised precedents for this are (1) that no major European member state counts EIB borrowing against national debt, and (2) that the EIB has successfully issued bonds since 1958 without national guarantees.

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