The answer to the eurozone crisis - theft

There are three possible solutions to the eurozone debt crisis: borrow money, print money, or steal money. Guess which one is most likely to happen?

I had coffee with CLSA's Russell Napier yesterday. I still think that the odds of Greece leaving the eurozone are very low indeed. Not many people agree at the moment, so it was something of a relief to find that he does. It is all very well being a contrarian but one doesn't want to be too lonely.

But if the zone doesn't break up, how does it survive? Napier's answer has long been financial repression. It would be nice to think that we could all grow our way out of debt, but that probably isn't an option any more. There isn't likely to be much growth in the West over the next few years, and there is even a chance that we might have reached a point from which we can't grow at all for many decades to come (see this week's magazine for more on this). And even if the likes of Greece could grow, it is hard to see how they could ever grow enough to deal with today's levels of debt.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.