If Greece falls, euro is pointless: Sarkozy 6 Mar 2010, 2110 hrs IST, REUTERS France will support Greece following its efforts to reduce its deficit and has no intention of seeing the country fall by the wayside, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Saturday. "If we created the euro, we cannot let a country fall that is in the euro zone. Otherwise, there was no point in creating the euro," Sarkozy said during a meeting with farmers. "We (must) support Greece because they are making an effort, or else there will be no more euro," he added. Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is due in Paris on Sunday to meet Sarkozy as part of a tour of capitals seeking backing for his debt-riddled nation. He received political support, but no promise of financial aid, at talks in Berlin with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday. French officials have said there is no need for aid at present, but Sarkozy made clear that Paris would be ready to help if Athens faced a budget meltdown. "The euro has no sense if there is no solidarity between ourselves," he said, telling the farmers that Greece was the number one importer of French beef. "I will fight with the same ferocious energy to defend the (European) common agriculture policy," Sarkozy added, referring to EU aid for its farm sector. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...-is-pointless-Sarkozy/articleshow/5652265.cms Finally, I was getting tired of the portrayal of Berlin as the capital of the European union, really.
I don't know about you lot but I think the issue of a Greece bailout may end up dividing the EU. There must be at least some countries that are pissed off that other countries are attempting to use them in financial bailouts they simply don't want.
Basically it's a French German thing since the rest is too insignificant or in need of a bail out themselves. The German public might not like the idea of a foreign bail out but they have such a leveraged and exposed banking sector they will pay either way which is ofcourse not easy politicaly for Merkel. Or they could leave the Euro, lose a big consumer market and see the rest of Europe return to competitivity overnight. They are not going to do that either. So anyway, if Merkel is smart (or who ever calling the shots) they should push for a backdoor bailout because the markets will force them anyway.
it is an economic myth that you devalue to competitiveness and prosperity. it was tried for decades by many countries around the world eg south america with lack of success. the Germans have nothing to worry about. except a possible world wide collapse. they could not stop it anyway.
+1 Sarko is definitely looking more statesmanlike. I think he's looking for his own De Gaulle moment. Here's some great history - a Time article on De Gaulle, Bretton Woods, and views of a gold standard from 1965: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,840572-1,00.html
Merkel is plain stupid. Every school children learns in Germany about the so called "Länderfinanzausgleich" ( financial equalization scheme between the Federal Government and the Länder ). According to Art 107 Par.2 (1) Nach Art. 107 Abs.2 Satz 1 GG Basic Constitutional Law the goal of the financial EQUALIZATION scheme is to "balance the different financial power of the states." With other words : "donor" states are paying into this system, "poor" states are benfitting through transfer payments. In Germany common practice since 1950 : http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Länderfinanzausgleich#L.C3.A4nderfinanzausgleich_im_engeren_Sinne
That is already happening in Europe. Greece always receives more than they donate to the EU common policy. That is not the issue. The problem here is that Greece cheated, plain and simple. Sarkozy is supporting this because he is having problems in his own country. He wants to appear the great statesman, but he is not one. He is saying grand speeches that are going to bite him in the butt. Do you REALLY think french people want to support Greece? Wait until French people have to start paying more taxes... What people forgot to mention in this article was that he also said he wants to stop speculation and the bad old market from working against Greece. Christian
Jim Rogers visited Southern Europe in 2000 and talked about it in his book Adventure capitalist. In the book he stated several Euro countries cooked the books like there was no tomorrow to get in. This was widely known troughout every level of the world of finance. So, if Rogers knew, his readers knew, and everyone knew 10 years ago... What's with the bad acting about Fraudulent numbers today? As far as the French goes there certainly is a considerable willingness troughout their society to help Greece versus the monster that is Anglo Saxon bankers rule the world capitalism upon which they frown so heavily.
I completely agree with you on the French and their demon called AngloSaxon. Sarkozy is using this as a machinery to further those ambitions. Why the hurrah on the fraudulent numbers? Because it is really bad now. I looked over the budget of Greece for 2010 and it is downright scary. If you look at the budget of 2000, 2001, and so on they are not that scary. The deficit is actually not that bad... The problem is that in the past few years the borrowing was 20% of budget, then 35% of the budget, and now its 44% of the budget. Think hard about this one. 44% of the budget is due to borrowing. Here is what I think happened. People knew there was cheating, but they did what I would call an error. The error from the Greek books seemed ok. So Greece was allowed in. But here is the thing, Greece needed money to support their economy. So they went to the ECB, and the ECB became a controller of the cash flows. But to keep up their ponzie scheme the Greek also went to the open market. Though they did not tell the ECB this. So the ECB seems say 10 euros, and the free market sees 3 euros, nobody sees the 13 euros. They see something completely different. Then around came September and the s**t started to hit the ceiling because the ECB smelled something. And that is where the fun begins. This is a Madof ponzie scheme... Germany is not helping Greece because it knows Greece is a bottomless pit. Essentially the reason for the ruckus now is because the fat lady in the toga outfit is singing... Christian
The Germans had to cut their own programs/services and increase taxes. Do you really think the folks in Germany will be happy if all the sacrifice they did ends up going to the Greeks? That would not sit well and no way would it pass in Germany. French will have to suck it up.