World on the Brink

[Lucky]

With the government of Greece calling for a referendum on the European plan to help Greece with its debts, the government itself is now at risk of failing, with only a two vote majority in parliament.

But world markets are even more nervous. This plan was supposed to be agreed to already. If Greece reneges, then confidence collapses. The Washington Post, in a photo gallery from Deutsch Bank, offers a worst-case scenario of what will happen if Greece abrogates the agreement it made last week:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/european-debt-crisis-worst-case-scenarios/2011/10/20/gIQA2hTa0L_gallery.html#photo=1

[KYTOP]

With the government of Greece calling for a referendum on the European plan to help Greece with its debts, the government itself is now at risk of failing, with only a two vote majority in parliament.

But world markets are even more nervous. This plan was supposed to be agreed to already. If Greece reneges, then confidence collapses. The Washington Post, in a photo gallery from Deutsch Bank, offers a worst-case scenario of what will happen if Greece abrogates the agreement it made last week:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/european-debt-crisis-worst-case-scenarios/2011/10/20/gIQA2hTa0L_gallery.html#photo=1

Well the PM of Greece fired his top military men today also. Greece has had military coups in the past. Wonder how the EU would deal with a military coup in Greece like Thailand had a few years ago?

[Lucky]

My guess is that Greece may be the first country to leave the Euro union. Would we then see a domino effect, with Ireland and Italy, Spain maybe also, leaving the union and the Euro thrown into chaos? This is something I never thought would happen, and here we are discussing it as a real possibility.

The suffering of individuals as a result would be enormous. It would take years to recover, and I probably would not live to see a thriving economy ever again. Who would have thought...wasn't this kind of economic failure supposed to all be in the past?

[MsGuy]

Who would have thought...wasn't this kind of economic failure supposed to all be in the past?

Remember when the ECB decided to copy the Fed and run stress tests on European banks? And then it came out that the stress senarios specifically assumed there would be no defaults on any sovereign debt? I recall thinking then that this was not going to end well.

The feckless response to the Euro crisis by their pols is just beyond human belief. The last two years reads like it was lifted from one of those crazy gold bug end of the world as we know it tracts.

----

The ECB finally caves last month and starts buying Italian bonds to prevent a collapse of the market in their debt, so what does Berlusconi do the next week? Merely jerk the emergency bill making its way through parliament and remove all but the most cosmetic of budget measures (or postpone their start date past the expiration of his term ), which, of course, left the Germans even more convinced that Southern Europeans were perfidious spendthrifts.

And meantime back in England the coalition government is fighting off a bill sponsered by its more nationalistic back benchers that would force the government to use the crisis to blackmail its European partners into rewriting the common market rules in favor of England.

[Lucky]

Greece has backed off of plans to hold a referendum on the Euro deal. Still and all, it indicates lots of troubles ahead.

[Guest EXPAT]

Greece has backed off of plans to hold a referendum on the Euro deal. Still and all, it indicates lots of troubles ahead.

The Greek government is so corrupt. I was shocked when they were admitted into the euro so quickly. I have personally dealt with selling technology equipment in that country and I think they have so many skeletons in their closet at the government level that any rescue may just go into some officials pockets. It's a real problem there unfortunately.

[TampaYankee]

I never believed the Euro Union would work. Exactly for the reasons it is failing: 1) maintaining independent economic and fiscal policies, no matter what lip service was paid the the contrary, and 2) the reluctance of sound countries to come to the aid of errant countries either by leaders or populace. The Brits were smart.

The EU is a good idea economic idea if they can overcome independent soverignty issues but nobody wants to give in to that. So look to a retrenchment to a smaller EU/Euro Zone with a larger group hanging on in more of a Common Market status.