The euro area crisis has often been described as the combination of a sovereign debt crisis, a banking crisis, and a macroeconomic crisis.1 Here, I will take a different perspective and argue that some key dimensions of the crisis are not specific to the euro area. I see three key dimensions of crisis that we have to deal with.
The first one takes the form of a classic debt deleveraging cycle. This dimension is probably the most visible materialisation of crisis but it is only a symptom of the underlying problem. In fact, there is a deeper dimension which I will refer to as a second dimension of the crisis, the “crisis of the social contract”.