Dark Scaremongering, the Euro and the Government's Bogeymen | Tuomas Malinen | Negotiator 62

Summary

Tuomas Malinen, CEO of GnS Economics, argues that the EU recovery fund is not a one-off but the end point of a transfer union, and that currency unions historically have only two directions: they break up, or they become political unions. The discussion runs from Esko Aho’s 1998 warning about “dark scaremongering” to the two functions of an exchange rate, why Finland’s longest post-independence recession happened without a currency of its own, and how capital flows from weak member states to strong ones inside a common currency. Sami Miettinen brings in central bank capitalism and the idea of federal debt as a new source of monetary heroin. The episode ends on the smear campaign directed at Malinen, a research seminar that eight foundations declined to fund, and his claim that Finland has a deeper, structural form of corruption than international indices capture.

Chapters

• 00:00 — Currency unions have only two directions
• 00:54 — The government insists it will not accept EU taxation
• 01:33 — Introducing Tuomas Malinen of GnS Economics
• 02:07 — A week in the company of the establishment
• 02:35 — The prime minister avoids the recovery fund debate
• 03:52 — The level of debate has clearly improved
• 04:42 — The effect on exports is negligible
• 05:58 — Juha Tervala’s report to the finance committee
• 06:35 — The fund is an increase in the EU membership fee
• 07:00 — Esko Aho and the 1991 float
• 08:52 — Lipponen took Finland into the euro in 1998
• 09:51 — Devaluations lifted Finland out of the depression
• 10:42 — A currency of its own and growth from the 1860s
• 12:48 — The GameStop analogy for pegging a currency
• 13:33 — Wahlroos and the function of a flexible exchange rate
• 14:35 — The longest recession since independence, without a currency
• 15:22 — Wage flexibility would have to be enormous
• 17:51 — Why Finland was taken into the euro deliberately
• 19:29 — The two central functions of an exchange rate
• 20:37 — Capital flows towards the strong countries
• 22:13 — Greece’s second bailout and the year 2011
• 22:55 — The recovery fund as the end point of a transfer union
• 24:12 — The package becomes a permanent transfer
• 26:34 — Own resources and EU-level taxation
• 27:07 — Central bank capitalism and Sauli Vilén
• 29:23 — Central bank financing always ends in catastrophe
• 30:44 — The treaties are reinterpreted without any vote
• 32:13 — Referendum initiatives are systematically rejected
• 33:03 — Smearing and claims about dubious company
• 35:24 — Targeting and deplatforming as tools of debate
• 37:26 — Sweden defended its ECU peg with a 500 percent rate
• 38:38 — Malinen’s worst economic-policy misjudgement
• 38:55 — The Galbraith seminar that went unfunded
• 40:15 — Finland has a deeper structural corruption
• 42:11 — From heresy to self-evident truth
• 42:41 — Where a transfer union would lead in Europe
• 43:29 — Federation, bailout and the balanced budget
• 44:24 — Member states would become vassal states
• 44:57 — Italy’s euro threat set the whole package in motion
• 45:19 — Now is the moment to return to the rules
• 45:43 — A wish that the government would join the debate

Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Pimeää pelottelua, euro ja hallituksen möröt | Tuomas Malinen | Neuvottelija 62. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.