Jogging for the Exit

FT Alphaville has a good writeup of what’s happening, and — implicitly — how Greek euro exit may be approaching.
What’s happening now is a “bank jog” — Greeks are pulling euro deposits out of banks fairly rapidly, but not quite fast enough to be called a bank run.
But where are the euros coming from? Basically, banks are borrowing them from the Greek central bank, which in turn must borrow them from the European Central Bank. The question then becomes how far the ECB is willing to go here; is it willing, in effect, to lend enough money to buy up the entire balance sheet of the Greek banking sector, given the likelihood that this sector will be left insolvent by Greek default?
Yet if the ECB says no more, Greek banks stop operating — and it’s hard to see how they can be restored to operation except by ditching the euro and using something else.
And if that happens, surely depositors in other European countries will start their own bank jogs …"

"Walk, do not run . . ."

This follows:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/extremists-and-enablers/

The Republicans are driving without a mandate.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/sweden-sweden-as-conservative-icon/

"May 16, 2012, 10:29 am

Sweden — Sweden!!! — as Conservative Icon

I learn from Ezra Klein’s interview with Tom Coburn that Sweden, of all places, has become the new right-wing icon. I thought Europe’s woes were all about collapsing welfare states? But anyway, the story now is that Sweden has slashed spending and cut taxes, and is doing great; supply-side economics vindicated!
Ezra points out, rightly, that Sweden has actually benefited a lot from very aggressive monetary policy — one of the original Princeton zero-lower-bound Group of Four, Lars Svensson, is now deputy governor of the Riksbank. (The others were Mike Woodford, yours truly, and a fellow by the name of Ben Bernanke).
But Ezra didn’t challenge Coburn on the claim about spending cuts; why don’t we look at what Sweden has actually done, as opposed to the official right-wing line? Look, in particular, at actual government consumption — purchases of stuff. Here’s Sweden versus the United States, from Eurostat: