DialogueMagazine

for him the question of inflation rates is not only an economic issue but as well has a high social aspect. Mr. Sullivan agreed on the opinion and said that once the inflation is higher it is really hard to get rid of it. For him the rebalancing of the supply and demand has to solve the problem, which of course means taking a lot of effort, but it is the only way to prevent future crises in a more sustainable way. Current Development The next and last topic which has been discussed was the topic of Greece. This example shows us, that there is really an aftermath of the crisis. We all know that in the south European country, national debts lead to serious problems. How will this develop and what do leading characters think which risks should be attended? Before the discussion went into detail, first of all the applause–o–meter was used again. This time the question was, if the European Union should help Greece. Obviously the audience had now real opinion concerning this question as rather half of the people said “Yes” and the other half clapped for “No”. advice, and reason to hope. According to Mr Ziesemer young generations are scared about national debts. The question is how to deal with them since many countries are highly indebted after rescuing several banks. A proposal for this has been made in the middle of February by the IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard who said that the inflation rate could be increased and in the consequence most of the debt problems would be solved. “Flirting with inflation is quite a dangerous thing, you may end up being married to it.” has been the counter argument of Prof. Weber. For him the proposal of Mr. Blanchard is a theoretical one, as a higher inflation rate allows more space to manoeuvre in times of crisis. However, the example of the United States, where it took Paul Volcker two decades to get the high inflation under control, not mentioning the costs going along with that, showes that Prof. Weber is truly right with his opinion. For him, price stability is the key argument. Especially people who can not afford financial products are hardly able to protect themselves from inflation. They will get into big trouble if prices raise. Consequently, Panels_A Newly Structured World Photo: Constantinos Dafalias