Daily quote by Great Recession

• The final Treaty of Lisbon was signed in 2007, with virtually no concessions to subsidiary nationalism, its authors blind to any incipient resentment it might breed. A year later, Europe and America experienced the most traumatic financial crash since 1929. In Europe the chief impact was on the weaker states of the EU, notably those of southern Europe. The eurozone’s German-controlled European Central Bank (ECB) looked immediately to the security of Germany’s overseas loans, including those to the zone’s weaker members. Though the ECB was impressively ready to print money–there was no repetition of the squeeze of 1929–the liquidity went to German (and other) banks rather than to member states or their citizens. Extreme austerity was forced on Greece, Spain and Italy, with levels of unemployment that rose to twenty-five per cent of the working population. In Spain, half of all young people became unemployed. Nothing could have more boosted a re-emergent European nationalism, or more damaged the cause of closer union.
  • Simon Jenkins, A Short History of Europe: From Pericles to Putin (2018)