You will be hard pressed to find another country that would accept so many crappy conditions to stay in and repay its debts, but hey don't ever give appreciation for effort where it is due
I was going to jump in on some of this stuff Piezoe is spouting, but I see you've got his number quite easily. Good hunting, mate. And good post.
I agree with this. The EMU was am experiment. The participants had high hopes it would work, and it looked good on paper. It has proved somewhat flawed. As you say, there is no one to blame, and the question really is, "what's next?".
Of course I have no more information than the rest of you, But as a keynesian I want to go on record as saying that resigned Greek Finance minister Yanis Varoufakis was right. I expect the the recession in Greece to continue and worsen. Merkel seems to understand what the problem is, but schnable, who she is politically allied with, has other ideas. Greece cheated to get in to the EMU --thank you Goldman Sachs. Schauble wants to punish them for that. Can't say it isn't deserved/
Keynesian economics has nothing in common with science and the outside world. More similar to the caloric theory. Simply no axiomatic.
There won't be a fiscal union. Not with Germany inside the EMU. Lol, maybe that is why the thread title should come to fruition. If all Eurozone members did their part to contribute to meeting fiscal guidelines and worked on managing their debt more prudently then the euro would be stronger and Germany would not, as some claim, enjoy a "cheap" Euro. Those that do not want to participate, such as Greece has refused to do its part so far, should be kicked out, or, if a majority in the EMU chooses to live off 1-2 strong members then possibly the strong members may be either forced out or leave on their own. But one thing that will never ever happen is that Germans or Scandinavians or some of the hard working Baltic Countries keep on financing lazy and abusive member states. At least not to the tune of what a fiscal union would entail with full-throttle transfer payments. Whatever you clothe the emperor in, whether it be called a Euro bond or what have you, there is no way Germany will ever agree to. If France even for one second believed of such possibility then they should learn from Cameron who badly miscalculated Germans and was forced to back off.
I have only made it so far in this thread. I bet you were shocked at reading responses to this very post of yours. Yes, not everyone looks at facts and takes them as such. There are people with a vested interest at nuking Germany and the very same people look for a German fault in every mishap under the sun. I am excited to read ahead now...I am sure its gonna be funny with Sheda and TsingTao in the middle of the pack...
Can't argue with any of this, except your implied solution. I know you think Greece should spend it's way out of the funk it's currently in, but the one thing that I've always agreed with volpunter on is that the Greeks are in this situation because of the reckless spending, not in spite of it. Greeks need serious reforms, or else they need their own currency to print and inflate away all the debt.