Yanis becomes more superficial by the minute - pretty hard even his track record.

This is the classic free lunch theory. If you put new labels on it, everything will be fine. Actually if you put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig (with apologies to pigs everywhere)

It is hard to know where to begin the most obvious is the idea that somehow no EZ member is paying for the ECB debt purchases. Yanis seems to think that we wont notice that the ESM, which will guarantee payments to the ECB, is of course funded (i.e. guaranteed) by the member states. This is so infantile it cant even be called a sleight of hand.

Bottom line Yanis wants the EZ to become a wealth transfer mechanism but still doesnt want to accept the inevitable transfer of most fiscal powers to the center that would accompany it. He is right that Greece needs debt restructuring and that several other members will take a long time to recover since they are locked into the EZ. Even with fiscal union, one doubts that the lot of the periphery will get that much better - there are poor states in the US