I think you make the mistake of personalizing this. Yes, Silvio was a bad guy - incompetent, corrupt ..., but Italy has a democracy and its own way of disposing of such - it may be uglier and slower and more tedious than we like, but that's what democracy is. G-pap, on the other hand, was a good guy as far as Berlin/Brussels was concerned, up to the point where he said, "look, we're going to have a revolution on our hands. If we're going to turn the screws even further, we better get some democratic legitimacy for it." At that point, he was summoned to Cannes and fired. Yes, markets are rejoicing, but this kind of crap never ends well. Never. And, yes, we can all agree that the slate of candidates for Prez are yahoos. When has it ever been different? Not sure what it has to do with this discussion.
AED is just a Eurozone permabear like say Peter Schiff about the US or Prechter about stocks. They make good points but their prejudice cloudens their views. That's why I added the Iran comment. After a decade of multi trillion costing wars for the US and the prospect of a new war with unknown consequences emerging AEP just keeps on lamenting the loss of sovereignity for individual Eurozone countries as global problem nr 1. A loss of sovereignity is unevitable and even desirible in the EU. For instance where I live they want to keep open 50 year old nuclear plants despite all the known safety hazards for budget reasons. i hope the EU steps in cause if something happens French, German or Dutch citizens will be just as much affected but had no say in it. Now the Eurozone is totally interwined and the house is on fire. Politicians and citizens are crying wolf over the measures imposed by external powers but that's no different to previous countries or continents under distress who couldnt get their house on order themselves. Plenty of time to implement the new Lira or Drachme and restore sovereignity should the fire not go out...
Put a label on him if you must, but events in the eurozone have played out as he has expected them to, and he calls things as he sees them. That makes him worth listening to. Perhaps you need to examine your own biases?
You know he advocates Europe to print money to the moon and thinks Bernanke is the only policy maker understanding the crisis? He is actually bullish on the USD and considers it the last man standing. Let us see how his predictions will do in the future...
So if at some point in life we've disagreed on something, that makes all else invalid? I applaud his understanding of events in Europe, and his unwavering view (through all of these ridiculous bailouts and solutions) of where it is headed, and things have taken a chilling turn for the worse over the past days. I've always disagreed with his Keyensian recommendations for solving things. As all here know, I too am long the dollar against euros and aussies.
Ratings agencies to be barred from rating certain countries. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...ratings-commissioner/articleshow/10732356.cms Banning short sales, sacking governments, banning ratings ... yeah, this is going to end well.