Deepankar Basu, UMass Amherst economics professor, wrote an article for ZNet in which he details the causes of the European debt crisis and outlines two different paths for recovery. According to Basu, the two underlying causes include peculiarities of Germany’s growth process in the 2000s and the loss of policy options for countries that are part of European Monetary Union (EMU). Basu outlines two different paths for recovery without dismantling the union. The first option, favoured by European elites, is to advance emergency loans to Greece, and if necessary to the other countries too, and enforce Structural Adjustment Program (SAP)-type conditionalities (so-called “austerity” measures). The second option, and the one that should be favored by the working class, is to is to work out a sensible debt-restructuring program with bondholders and force the German economy to reflate. (ZNet, 5/23/10)