Reuters 0:59, Sat 13 March 2010 LONDON "The euro zone has agreed a multi-billion euro bailout for heavily indebted Greece as part of a package to support the euro, the Guardian newspaper reported on Saturday. The 16 euro zone members have agreed on "coordinated bilateral contributions" in the form of loans or loan guarantees to Greece [IF] Athens is unable to refinance its debts and asks the European Union for help, the Guardian quoted a senior European Commission official as saying. The agreement was reached despite strong resistance by Germany, and Berlin has played the pivotal role in organising the deal, the paper quoted other sources as saying. Euro zone finance ministers will finalise the package on Monday, the paper said. The aid to be made available by the bailout could reach 25 billion euros, the paper quoted its sources as saying. Greece's borrowing needs for the whole of 2010 total 53.2 billion euros." more http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/eu...ece-report-reuters_molt-fb6f988cccb1.html?x=0
Either they're lying to keep the story down or there are a few countries that are in complete disagreement over it.
I'm very suprised they keep mentioning to protect the euro. I would think they would love a weak euro after it was strong for years. look at the wonders a weak $ did for the us and its stk mkt
Am I the only one who might be glad to see the EU break up over this? Then we'd have all these countries to choose from that follow different policies I think having one government would be completely detestable just purely for that reason.
Germany kept providing cheap or even free cash to Greece for years so that Greek consumers would keep buying its products. Using their influence, political and commercial, they prevented bankers from instituting strict lending laws while they never protested when the Greek government was increasing the public sector work force. A similar situation but in greatest proportions between USA and China was the cause of the crisis. China kept lending the cash it was getting from the US back to the US so that US consumers would keep buying its products. So we have the following situation. Two countries, China and Germany, have been and are still financing the bankruptcy of two other nations, USA and Greece. The reason these two nations will go bankrupt if they continue having a huge trade imbalance with their counterparties is because for some reasons their politicians are not willing to give an end to the imbalance. Greece is in a worse place than USA because it is part of a so called Union that, for everyone who understands it deeply, its true aim was to milk other countries and get their wealth through the institution of free trade and a common currency that prevented devaluations. In the case of China, that was another monstrous creation of US in order to squeeze Russia. Now that Russia is reforming and the cold war has finished, there is no point for the US to continue transferring huge amounts of wealth to China. This creates unprecedented imbalances in money supply, pushes interest rates down and causes bubble markets, as we have already experienced. The trade imbalances must be terminated otherwise we will soon see a worse crisis, much worse than before.
Spurious argument. No one held a gun to these consumers to force them to binge spend. You're confused about the real underlying issues.
Spurious argument? What does his argument have anything to do with consumers? He's talking about the balance of payments between countries. What's there not to understand? One country cannot have a high current account deficit while another has a high current account surplus. At least not for long. Germany will ultimately suffer too. Sure, it has more money and a smaller debt, but it went overboard in producing, and did not consume enough. Germany was foolish to think they can overproduce at the expense of other countries' trade balances... Now Germany will see that the artificial demand is evaporating as those balances correct. The bottom line is the inherent trade imbalances in the global trade and financial system. Fiat money masks these balances to a point that they ultimatley "correct" in a rather painful way - for everyone. Reducing this to the lone consumer is spurious. Your response is spurious.