Eventually the German political establishment and indeed the population on the whole will have to realize that this crises will not be fixed until the Germans take the same hit as say the Irish did, in reverse and in proportion.
We socialized the debts of the banking industry, the Germans will have to socialize the debts of sovereigns. Marshall plan in reverse.
If the Euro is to survive then Germany will have to pay for it. End of story.

That's only the direct exposure. The stinger is indirect exposure through derivatives which are most likely to find a home in the USA, since US banks and insurance companies would have to make about 60% of the default insurance payouts. This is where the dominoes start to look a bit shaky. Many of those banks and insurance companies are already in bad shape since the sub-prime crisis. It remains to be seen whether America has the funds, or the political will, to start rescuing them, particularly in the face of a possible subsequent default by Spain.

As long as it gets all the parts from eBay we should be safe enough.

Or. stick it in a credit union.....Yes, a few branches are in trouble but nothing like the banking sector and there is a huge capital base there when you look at how many people have accounts there.

They should just reboot, cancel all debt then start again with new lending rules in place to stop this happening again - like say mandatory balanced national budgets - with countries receiving a UN nuke if they broke this rule

wrong thread.

This is an actual UKIP policy.

Rabo is where a lot of the Irish money I know about (ie friends and family) ended up.[/quote]

Or. stick it in a credit union.....Yes, a few branches are in trouble but nothing like the banking sector and there is a huge capital base there when you look at how many people have accounts there.[/quote]
Indeed but I was thinking about amounts greater than the government guarantee would cover.

is it?

right i know which way i am voting next time!

Sun God - so essentially this is true then the equation favoured the Germans and they are the only ones who have done well out of it??

You rich bastard

Absolutely it's a simplistic view, I can't take any other as I'm not that well versed in this kind of thing.

Still, I see it as a simple situation, tell me how I'm wrong.

They cooked the books to get into the Euro in the first place. Then they refused to live within their means for a long time, maintaining a farcically bloated and inefficient public sector with ludicrous pensions and retirement ages and turning tax evasion into a near national sport.

Now when other people have offered to pay half of their debt they are balking at paying the other half. They're not willing to make the (admittedly harsh) sacrifices that they need to to get the country back on a sound financial footing. They are reneging on commitments they made only months ago that they drew down vast sums of cash on foot of.

At some point (in my view) it is more damaging to have them in then it is to fuck them out. If they aren't interested in what I think is a pretty good deal then let's concentrate on shoring up the countries that are taking the pain of austerity and facing up to their responsibilities.

If the Greeks want to roll the dice, leave the Euro and try go it alone with a return to the drachma then let them. What's the other option? Should we forgive them 80% of their debt? Why? What's to stop them doing the same thing again? As I said the place is a basket case.

Surely they'd have been better off letting Greece default months ago and then used all the bailout money to pay their creditors.

Every economic decision since Maastricht has been skewed in Germany's favor, initially to pay for the cost of re-unification but then they got used to it and to be honest nobody in Europe since Thatcher has had the cojones to stand up to them.
In the early naughties for example Ireland as a euro member had interest rates of 1 %. they should have been about 10% to stop the economy from overheating but there are 4.5 million paddies and 80 million Germans. As the Yanks might say, you do the math !!

The Germans have been the biggest winner yes - for every euro of trade deficit you find in a country like greece germany will be getting some of that in their trade surplus, problems for greece jobs for germans

Under the Deutschmark german exports would have become too expensive with the euro they have been amazingly competitive - greece has no chance of competing

Schadenfreude seems to be the right word then - The Krauts are going to have to pick up the tab. (or most of it)

Too many egos in Europe, none willing to be the one to admit the Eurozone isn't working.

Perhaps. It might have stopped the chances of Europe falling apart which is very much the case at the moment.

Exactly - it would have been cheaper to let them go a year ago as the amount that would have been lost back then is probably the same sum as the amount given since in loans (maybe a slight exagerration but you know what I mean)

So ... do you kiss goodbye to growth? You can't have mandatory balanced budgets if you want to achieve growth, surely. There have to be winners and losers: no country can have a budget surplus without another country running a deficit.

Backs away, tugging forelock in
Sun God's direction - nervously fiddles with my cloth cap
whilst trying to hide the hole in the arse of my corduroy overalls.

rule 1

There is nothing to stop all countries running a balanced budget - the private sector then does what it wants, which is where the trade balance comes in

The two are seperate

I could feel his sneering disdain when Credit Union was raised!

I was only joking. UKIP don't really want to nuke the feckless.

They want to put them in camps.

Nonsense IC......all my kids have accounts in Malahide Credit Union.

I wonder which branches were the ones who got into trouble? Some of them apparently gave out huge loans for property speculation which was madness and never what they were intended for.

I think you will find it is their govt along with Goldman Sachs that cooked the books not your average Greek. The only thing that could be levelled at them really is the tax evasion but that also comes back to the govt to properly enforce it otherwise we would all be at it.

I am talking about your average Greek person, not Greece as a nation. How many here would put up with what they are facing without kicking off?

And as recommended by Keynes to the UK treasury pre the 1st world war.

They voted in those governments!

I'm not for a second disputing that they are in a nasty spot and the future is looking ropey either way. I just don't understand why they are angry with anyone except themselves and I don't know what they think the alternative to a lot of austerity is?

They didn't pay their own way, now others are offering to pay half their debt and they are turning up their noses. I think they could easily seriously regret that in a few years.

Time will tell.

Well they could just default as quite a few commentators are suggesting, then whose fault is it?The Greeks for defaulting or the Germans, Irish, French etc for lending to them in the first place?

Quite.

It is an argument we Irish are well versed in regarding the private bank debt we've socialised.

They were certainly at risk for lending it to them at an interest rate than bore no relation to the risk.

Gideon and Dave are equally as clueless.

To be fair to TSG £85K isn't exactly put your feet up and retire money

That ain't going to last long without income rolling in. By the time you factor School fees etc. etc into the mix.

in the 25th century there is no money
no need for it

the star fleet run everything so we'll be ok