Joseph Stiglitz has written an article Seven Changes Needed To Save The Euro And The EU for The Guardian (also publish in Project Syndicate). None of the seven points say anything about a Euro Area central government. His point number 3 proposes “Eurobonds”, but this is not the same as having a federal government like the federal government of the United States.

Guess since nobody has said it, so I will: a Euro Area central government is the only way to save the Euro Area. Some patches can be done here and there such as the rescues done by the European Central Bank but this just helps remove some financial instability and doesn’t address the problem of economic stagnation. There is also a possibility of exiting the Euro Area but at this point in time, this is highly dangerous because debt levels are high and can cause a systemic crisis in not just the nation leaving but also the rest of the Euro Area and the rest of the world.

There is of course supranational institutions but these are not powerful enough. What one needs is a central government which has huge fiscal powers for making expenditures and receiving taxes from Euro Area economic units, just like federal taxes in the United States.

The most important economic reason is that the federal government will engage in automatic fiscal transfers which will stabilize output and debts of each Euro Area nation. Imagine if a nation such as Greece is allowed to expand output by fiscal policy or by private expenditure. Without a central government, a rise in output at say x% will require domestic demand to grow much faster and run into an unsustainable territory – mainly because of deterioration in the current account balance of payments.

Imagine Greece’s current account deficit hits 15% of GDP. This is not an exaggeration. At the peak of the crisis, Portugal’s current account deficit hit 12.6%. Because of the sectoral financial balance identity

NL = Govt DEF  + CAB

where NL is the private sector net lending, Govt DEF is the government’s deficit and CAB is the current account balance of international payments, a 15% current account deficit would imply atleast 15% government deficit. This is assuming private sector net lending is positive. Otherwise private sector net lending would turn negative, or it would have to become a net borrower.

But it’s not the case that there is an upper limit to the process. A steady rate of output would require an ever increasing rise in current account deficit, and an ever increasing debt/gdp which would stop eventually because foreign investors and institutions will not like it at some point. At that point, output will collapse and unemployment will rise.

By having a central government, such processes are prevented from becoming unsustainable. The difference between private receipts on exports less expenditure on imports will be compensated by the central government expenditure and tax receipts. So output is more stable and so is indebtedness to non-resident economic units.

So a Euro Area central government can raise output of the whole Euro Area and also keep indebtedness of Euro Area nations in check. Without a central government one is at the expense of the other. Right now, there is a deflationary bias to keep debts in check. Proposers such as Joseph Stiglitz want output to rise but do not realize that without a Euro Area central government, it comes at the expense of unsustainable debt.