Can you name a country that has a strong, fair, and just judicial system without having complete control of their monetary policy?
I can’t even begin to imagine how that country would continue to exist. A government that doesn’t control its own monetary policy isn’t a government at all.
I think you know on its face that’s not even remotely equivalent to what we’re talking about here. Each country you’re referring to is a part of the EU and as a member still has control of the overall policy. Just because they agree to making it democratic doesn’t somehow mean that private individuals now operate outside the scope of their collective control.
> I think you know on its face that’s not even remotely equivalent to what we’re talking about here
I did not know. The phrase "complete control over monetary policy" has a very specific meaning and I stand by my response as a counterexample to that meaning.
And I don't think this is an unreasonable misunderstanding! People do worry about Bitcoin w.r.t monetary policy, a future of "hyperbitcoinization" where the world runs off a deflationary currency seems undesirable, to say the least.
If that is not what you intended then even given your clarification here I'm still not sure what you meant to say with that phrase.
The European Parliament has regulatory powers over the ECB that are almost exactly the same as the Congress' powers over the Fed, even down to the numbers.
So yeah, Germany does have control over its own monetary policy, they just made a political choice to share that power with France, Italy, Spain, etc.
I think I've lost the thread here, I am aware that each of the member countries have some control.
However, for example, my understanding is that Greece was _forced_ by the ECB and others to undertake some wildly unpopular austerity measures. It doesn't sound like they had a lot of control. If Germany were to go through a similar crisis my understanding is that it could also be forced to take measures Germans do not approve of.
I'm not passing any judgement here! But surely we can both agree that Greece (and Germany) do not have full control over their monetary policies and still exist as independent countries, that's the only point I wanted to make.
> However, for example, my understanding is that Greece was _forced_ by the ECB and others to undertake some wildly unpopular austerity measures. It doesn't sound like they had a lot of control.
They weren't forced per se. Their government was close to bankrupt, facing loan repayments it couldn't pay. The choice was either refinancing or default. The EU offered refinancing loans, but on strict conditions including austerity measures. The Greek government decided that those austerity measures, as painful as they were, were a lesser evil than the immense economic chaos and uncertainty a default would cause. The situation the Greek government faced wasn't hugely different from that repeatedly faced by some other governments such as Argentina. The main difference between Greece and Argentina is that Argentina controlled its own monetary policy, and hence had some control over exchange rates; but, when faced with massive debts you can't repay (denominated in international currencies), control over your own exchange rates is only of modest help.
It was commonly said at the time that if Greece defaulted it would have to leave the Eurozone. I'm not sure how true that actually is – the Eurozone has no formal mechanism to expel a member, and so if a defaulting Greece refused to reintroduce the drachma, I don't think there is anything the ECB could do to actually force them to. However, in such a dire economic crisis, there is a decent chance the Greek government may have decided that leaving the Euro was the best option, and negotiated with the EU for a voluntary departure. Since default was avoided, it never came to that.
I'm not a Randian or whatever, but it doesn't seem that inconceivable to imagine a hypothetical government which provides security/military/justice services without enforcing a monetary policy. I can think of many potential difficulties running and funding such a government, but it's not like the concept is so absurd that such a government can't ever possibly exist sometime within the next tens of thousands of years.
"In charge of its monetary policy" can mean a hundred different things, so that is impossible to answer directly. While a centralized (and government controlled, regardless of what it would have you believe) banking system seems as obvious today as a national military, it is a relatively modern invention. The Fed itself didn't exist until 1913. USA was on the gold standard until 1933. The US dollar wasn't a fiat currency until 1971.
Some of this country's greatest achievements have come in a system where the government still had full legislative, executive and judicial powers but had to operate under basic rules like not being able to print money for themselves whenever they felt like it.
Ok, that is different though... you are arguing the US CHANGED their policy, and you don't like the way they changed it.
That is different than saying they were not in control of their monetary policy... they have always been in control, you just liked the old monetary policy better
Have they always been in control? Yes, for the entire existence of the US it has been legally capable of creating a US Dollar and of turning it into a fiat currency.
However, for large swaths of the time the US has been around that has not been politically feasible, and I'm not sure it would have been economically feasible, fiat currencies seem to have taken a while to gain stability and acceptance.
For a large period of time the US was on a gold standard and de facto did not have control over monetary policy. It doesn't matter much that they technically had power if they didn't use it.
Yes, Bretton Woods isn't a good example of a time where the US literally lacked control over monetary policy.
However, the GP stated that countries without control of monetary policy cease to exist. For the purposes of addressing that statement a period of >30 years where the US decided not to exercise any control seems nearly as good of a counter-example as a period where they literally had no control.
In the countries that you think of as having 'strong, fair, and just judicial systems' governments typically control only the fiscal policy. Monetary policy is left to some independent entity. For countries with fixed exchange rates it is also impossible to have autonomous monetary policy without imposing restrictions on capital mobility. This also applies to blocks of countries, e.g., none of the individual governments of euro countries have control over the bloc's monetary policy.
I can’t even begin to imagine how that country would continue to exist. A government that doesn’t control its own monetary policy isn’t a government at all.