Flexibility gives way to rigidity’s virtues

” (…) The idea that flexibility is good and rigidity is bad continues to influence the minds of policymakers and analysts. Rating agencies, for example, continue to give a more favourable rating to US and UK sovereign debt based on the notion that the greater flexibility of these countries gives them a better capacity to adjust to the crisis than rigid countries such as Spain, Italy and Ireland.

The opposite is true. Today, rigidities in wages, employment and social security allow countries to deal better with the great rigidity that the fixed levels of debt impose on households and companies. We should cherish these rigidities. (…)”

Paul De Grauwe, FT.com, February 22 2009