Europe Economy

Market Would Face Bitter Fight to Break Euro: Strategist

CNBC.com
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Talk of a "death spiral" for the euro isn't taking the political will of euro-zone members and any breakup is unlikely, despite the talk of economists such as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, Sean Corrigan, chief investment strategist for Diapason Commodities Management, told CNBC Monday.

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Click here to watch the interview with Sean Corrigan

In an excerpt from the afterward to his book "Freefall," published in UK newspaper the Sunday Telegraph, Stiglitz said it would only be a matter of time before Spain is attacked by speculators.

"The euro zone needs better economic cooperation, not just the kind that merely enforces budget rules, but cooperation that also ensures that ...when countries experience large adverse shocks, they get help from others," he wrote, according to Reuters.

"Europe created a solidarity fund to help new entrants into the European Union...but it failed to create a solidarity fund to help any part of the euro zone that was facing stress. Without some such fund, the future prospects of the euro are bleak."

Corrigan agreed that "there are huge economic disparities (between euro-zone countries) that have never been addressed,” but pointed to how the bloc overcame opposition in rolling out the new currency in the first place.

Opponents tried "valiantly for two or three years to break the thing apart before it even started," he said.

"Ultimately the European political will in the short run overcame the market's assault on it," Corrigan added.

"The market is going to have to push very hard to break it," he said.

Corrigan also said that the euromay be in trouble because countries have been following Stiglitz's pro-spending advice for two decades.

The Columbia professor is a "prime example" of an academic that always supports the government role in the economy, he said.