(Reuters) - Saving Greece from a default would be better for the euro zone countries and ease the threat of similar developments in Spain and Italy, Russia's Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said on Saturday. "It is better to save (Greece)," Kudrin told journalists at the sidelines of global policymakers' semi-annual meeting in Washington. "Risks of the world economy would increase drastically and interest on Italy and Spain's debt would increase dramatically and it would be harder for them to service their debt. It's like at the front: breaking the front even narrowly already weakens the entire army and brings the enemy within," Kudrin said. The European Union's top economic official, Olli Rehn, said as soon as the region's governments confirm new powers for their 440-billion-euro fund, known as the EFSF, attention will turn to how to get more impact from the existing money. (Reporting by Lidia Kelly, editing by Will Dunham) http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/25/us-eurozone-russia-greece-idUSTRE78O0BO20110925
Nice to have the Russians on board. Obviously they're aware that they have vested interest. They're not in a position to help out with cash but their energy and materials play big in Euro economy. IMF $440 billion is scary. If we start cascading we'll need 10 times that.
Greece needs to default in order to make europe stronger. that's what russia does not want. i enjoy these naive comments above...
Greece simply cannot be locked into the same currency as a huge exporter like Germany. The EU needs to push Greece back into its own currency that so it can devalue as necessary.
Its not just Greece. Germany's policies run riot over all other countries in the EU. They are the big winners because they are exporters who have effectively captured their customers, and the ECBs economic policies are for them, and to a lesser extent, France. It's pretty damned rich for them to complain about Greeks, Irish, and Spanish when the structure of the Euro has always been about what they need, and not the other members. Countries need their own ability to set interest rates, especially if they are not correllating well with Germany, because the Germans will screw them every single time. The best thing that could happen to Greece is that it will leave the Euro, and then give two fingers to the Germans when they come to collect in Euros vs their newly devalued currency. What Iceland did makes sense in this context. Fuck the German bankers. And yet, who comes to Germany's rescue if this fantasy were to ever happen? That's right: Tim Geithner. So its just more of the same bullshit. Nobody fixes anything anymore.
The solution to me is not complicated, eurozone bonds and steps towards a United States of Europe but first with the original countries , western Europe, the thing got way too big . Then you force the Greeks and the Irish and the Portugese to cut expenses drastically, I mean drastically , not 10% salary cuts and budget freezes. Greece can devalue internally, cut salaries and costs across the board, Greece becomes competitive. As for the Irish , time they give up their special tax treatment of corporations and raise taxes across the board, they should have been forced to do so already. Ireland should be an economic wasteland today, they made mistakes attracting all those companies , taking away from the rest of the EU and fueling a RE bubble, the Irish should have been left to rot , no bank bailouts, no EU money, the Euro would be perfectly fine. But first we should reform EU politics and the ECB which played a big role in this with low interest rates . And let's not talk about a depression /great recession we are going to have it anyway and it will be a good thing for the world provided we don't let politicians start wars .
Who gives a damm about greece? Pretty much a non country-only thing there is a few beaches covered in Cigarette Butts
your remark is typical american hubris. look at the decline in value of the $US over the last 5 years. .