On the other hand, Ireland came out of their bailout last week.
Sassenach wrote:The problems haven't gone away. France is about to tip into a triple-dip recession, Italy's debt to GDP ratio is sky-rocketing despite running a primary budget surplus, Spain and Portugal and Greece are still running youth unemployment rates of 40+% and anti-European parties are poised to sweep the board in a host of countries in next year's European Parliament elections. Right now the Front National is topping the polls in France. It remains to be seen whether they'll crash to earth again, but it's hardly an encouraging development.
The can has been successfully kicked down the road for a bit is all.
(from 2011!)geojanes wrote:As I've said before, your notion of the Euro failing ("Death Knell") is probably very different than most people. If Greece ends up dropping the Euro and reviving the Drachma, I don't think many people would say that is evidence the Euro failed. Rather, I would think that such an event would be evidence that Greece failed and was not able to bring the Euro down with it.
I had half thought of mentioning it, but the absence of Nostradamus/Mach doesn't make it quite so fun.Sassenach wrote:I thought it might be a good time to resurrect this thread. We seem to have right through the recent Greek elections and the fallout from it without anybody at Redscape batting an eyelid. That's quite odd when you stop to think about it, what with the potential consequences being so severe.
The other thing the Greeks are reminding Germany of is the deal in the 1953 whereby huge amounts of German debt was written off by the main creditors as part of the creation of the FDR (then to be West Germany). About 50% of the pre-WWII debts (mainly Versailles reparations unpaid) and post-WWII debts (mainly from the US) were written off, and the remainder were spread over 30 years and the interest and repayments capped and tied to German balance of trade. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Agr ... eece_issueThe Greeks are now demanding about 300 billion Euros in war reparations from Germany, threatening to grant legitimate papers to millions of Islamic migrants and send them on into Germany if Merkel doesn't cough up with yet more free money and generally making complete asses of themselves. This is not going to end well. It's the sort of behaviour that can only be explained if it's being done as a prelude to leaving the Euro. Looks like ol' Mach might finally have his prediction start to come true...
not all of that has happened yet, and the argument is that the conditions for it are not helping - Greece has a structural surplus, but the economy is in a far worse state than it was when the bailouts started.Sassenach wrote:Greece has also seen a massive writedown of its debts, with the remainder being put into very long terms with very low interest rates. What they're now demanding is essentially being allowed to default on the remainder while still being lent even more money. It's not politically sustainable.