By Anne-Laure Delatte, Michel Husson, Benjamin Lemoine, Éric Monnet, Raul Sampognaro, Bruno Tinel and Sébastien Villemot

About the proposal to cancel ECB-held sovereign debt

While the end of the pandemic is not yet in sight, austerity is nonetheless making a discreet comeback in the public debate. If fiscal orthodoxy tolerated that States have stood by an economy hampered by health restrictions, it claims again that newly contracted sovereign debt would have to be repaid through …

Between 2007 and 2015, Greece’s public debt rose from 103% to 179% [1] of its GDP (see chart below). The debt-to-GDP ratio rose at an uninterrupted pace, except for a 12-point fall in 2012 following the restructuring imposed on private creditors, and despite the implementation of two macroeconomic adjustment programs (and the beginning of a third) that were aimed precisely at redressing the Greek government’s accounts. Austerity has plunged the country into a …