Bootle’s team wins £250,000 for Grexit plan
ROGER BOOTLE and his Capital Economics team won the world’s second biggest economics prize yesterday, giving a guide to an ailing Eurozone nation considering exit.
He and his team pocketed £250,000, after coming top of a field of 422 submissions, including one from an eleven-year-old schoolboy from the Netherlands.
Bootle described his scheme as, “detailed and thorough, but not novel,” and gave a run through of the main elements of the plan.
The most important element was the devaluation effected by foreign exchange markets, expected to make the initially-at-parity new currency at least 30 per cent cheaper – and thus restore competitiveness.
The difficult sticking point was seen to be the question of debt denomination.
European lenders would be deeply resistant to a switch to a national debt in the new currency, but in euros the post-devaluation debt burden would be effectively insurmountable.