I Told You So

Richard Baldwin’s post on Vox , « A re-cap of Vox columns on the Eurozone crisis » (May 13) begins with the following self congratulating abstract:

“As early as 2008, Vox columnists provided research-based warnings that the global crisis could lead to a Eurozone crisis. This column provides a recap of the contributions on this site where leading economists used economic logic and a firm grasp of the facts to think ahead about Europe. The main outline of today’s crisis was plain months ago; EU leaders’ dilatory response made things worse”.

Well, let me try a hand at that currently widely popular exercise:

As early as 1998 I published a book, l’Erreur européenne (Euro Error) that warned, on the basis of economic theory and empirical evidence, that first, European countries planning to enter a common currency zone did not actually belong to an optimal currency area (OCA), and that moreover, these European States did not belong to a common “optimal state area” either. (You can check that on my homepage here ).

Richard Baldwin, you are beaten by ten years at your own game …