Niall Ferguson and Nouriel Roubini: Berlin is Ignoring the Lessons of the 1930s

Niall Ferguson is a British historian and Nouriel Roubini is an American economist.

Is it one minute to midnight in Europe?

We fear that the German government’s policy of doing "too little too late" risks a repeat of precisely the crisis of the mid-20th century that European integration was designed to avoid.

We find it extraordinary that it should be Germany, of all countries, that is failing to learn from history. Fixated on the non-threat of inflation, today’s Germans appear to attach more importance to 1923 (the year of hyperinflation) than to 1933 (the year democracy died). They would do well to remember how a European banking crisis two years before 1933 contributed directly to the breakdown of democracy not just in their own country but right across the European continent.

We have warned for more than three years that continental Europe needs to clean up its banks’ woeful balance sheets. Next to nothing has been done. In the meantime, a silent run on the banks of the eurozone periphery has been under way for two years now: cross-border, interbank and wholesale funding has rolled off and been substituted with European Central Bank financing; and "smart money" – large uninsured deposits of wealthy individuals – has quietly departed Greek and other "Club Med" banks.

But now the public is finally losing faith and the silent run may spread to smaller insured deposits...