Euro Crises

So once again, we have political idiocy threatening unprecedented damage to the world economy. Is this how Europeans felt during the American debt ceiling debate?

The thought did cross my mind...

The newspapers of my country seem more concerned about the (admittedly baffling, but eh) sex life of our prime minister than about the dismal state of our economy.

Talk about skewed priorities...

edited 17th Sep '11 10:13:53 AM by Carciofus

It was painted as the incoming end of days.

What is Europe doing and why is it our concern?

At this point, I would have thought the headline "Berlusconi has sex a lot" would be on a par with "dog bites man".

The EU is the United States' largest trading partner and the only other nuclear armed democracies are in the EU.

That doesn't necessarily make what they do my business.

And still, what are they doing?

Basically, they're refusing to admit that Greece is bankrupt, and they're refusing to consistently stand behind the other euro countries, thus ensuring the sovereign equivalent of a bank run. Meanwhile the economy is taking a huge hit and bond rates are growing ever higher. So far the politicians have just played for time with half hearted bailouts, but the problem is only getting worse.

There's only two possibilities at this point. Either the euro breaks up, or the countries give up their fiscal sovereignty to a central body. The first option will be like fall 2008 all over again, except worse.

edited 17th Sep '11 11:19:34 AM by storyyeller

And to think, I believed the Euro was doing better than the dollar.

~shrug~

Europeans have their own way of doing things. I imagine they'll fix it themselves...

^ I don't know, the Euro Debt Crisis has been claiming victim after victim. It's not confined to Greece.

Well, then I guess the US and the EU can be debt buddies while China buys all of us, before collapsing themselves on their own poor choices.

Then we can redo the entire 20th Century!

I thought the already admitted that Greece was broke back when they were forced to give them a couple billion.

^^ I wouldn't trust the China Takes Over the World route. They have a huge unavoidable demographics problem about to hit them and worse there's a lot of suspicion none of their economic or government figures are accurate. (Chiefly, there's a lot of suspicion the PRC government is cooking the books.)

edited 17th Sep '11 11:42:44 AM by MajorTom

I think the European standard of "broke" is when they're willing to come in and literally redo your economy, a la Turkey back in the late 1800s-early 1900s, if I recall correctly...

Then we all hang together.

edited 17th Sep '11 11:43:14 AM by USAF713

I thought the already admitted that Greece was broke back when they were forced to give them a couple billion.

They're pretending that Greece can get by with a combination of budget cuts and temporary bailouts. It can't.

Wouldn't one big debt-clearing bailout be more efficient?

"Efficiency" is a foreign concept in government...

"All governmental policy is wrong, but frightfully well carried out."

There's still a collossal amount of denial over the fact that Greece is utterly fucked. Much of it coming from the Greeks themselves, who would rather tear the country apart with riots than accept that endemic corruption on their own part is a significant factor in their problems existing at all.

The only way to convince someone they need your help is to show them what happens when you don't help them.

So... kick them out of the EU.

^ That sets a horrible precedent for the rest. What do you think the reaction to other debt-heavy EU countries afterwards would be? The UK, Ireland, Italy, France, Iceland, Spain, Portugal, none of them are on shining territory worthy of keeping AAA bond ratings and proclaiming year over year budget surpluses. Do you kick them out too?

They're actually doing something to help themselves out of their little shithole, though, aren't they? Greece, to my knowledge, is just sitting there and whining while waiting for someone to fix it for them.

Greece is certainly being less proactive than all of the others (their government is risking letting the country be torn apart by the angry citizens who simply will not accept austerity measures) but the gap between some of the countries isn't gigantic.

All I hear is "austerity is bad!" and now we're angry at them because they won't accept it?

Where is the goddamned consistency here?

Either way, I'm sure even the threat of "you will be kicked out if you don't get your act together" would produce some seriously astonishing results...