'The Common Currency Endgame Has Begun'

[marmar]

from Der Spiegel:



Greece has backed away from holding a referendum on the euro bailout package. This week's tumult, however, shows that Europe is still far away from solving the euro crisis. German editorialists on Friday warn that the worst-case scenario may arrive sooner rather than later.

It took less than a week for confidence in the euro zone to evaporate. Again. Last Wednesday, European Union leaders agreed to sweeping measures aimed at saving the common currency. But the shocking announcement on Monday by Greek Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou that his country intended to hold a referendum on the conditions of the bailout measures, with its rigid and unpopular austerity measures, was all it took to shake markets again and raise doubts about the strength of the bailout.

As if that weren't bad enough, interest rates are rising on Italian government bonds again -- this week increasing to 6.4 percent and ever closer to the psychologically important 7 percent figure at which analysts believe the country will begin to have significant difficulties refinancing its debt.

On Thursday, even as Papandreou abandoned his referendum plans, he reinforced the image of a bumbling euro zone unable to get a grip on its currency crisis. His about face came within 24 hours of an emergency meeting with euro-zone leaders in Cannes -- and under tremendous pressure from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,795907,00.html

[JDPriestly]

1. One currency, my eye!

Can you imagine California which has at least in the past paid more to the Federal government in taxes than it gets back and in that way covers the excessive spending and debts of states like Alabama or Missippi and some others ordering Alabama or Mississippi to spend less?

That's not one currency. That's a divisive action.

[Odin2005]

2. The Euro was a great idea whose implementation went horribly wrong.

[meow2u3]

4. The big international banks scammed the Eurozone

the same way they fleeced Americans out of their hard-earned money. They ran the same scams on Europe--between those exotic derivatives and the extortion of the governments of the Eurozone--as they did on the US.

[AverageJoe90]

5. Amen!

[Odin2005]

6. Yup.

[Kaleko]

8. You got it.

Looking still deeper behind the veils our international banking industry puts up, the name Rothschild keeps flashing.

That family with its innumerable trustees cum front organizations seems to own and control more than half of the wealth in the entire world.

As they say, follow the money and you will know who really calls the shots.

[applegrove]

3. A common currency does not work when the distribution of wealth varies so much amongst nations.

This gives me pause. I'm not sure that there should be a common currency anywhere unless a nation is tiny.

[14thColony]

9. Perhaps it's not the idea so much as the implementation

One common currency that worked well in the end is/was the U.S. dollar, which supplanted 13 different colonial pounds in 1792 and only became the sole currency of the U.S. in 1857 when Spanish and Mexican pesos were declared no longer legal tender.

[Quantess]

7. The Euro was just somethng more for the bansksters to exploit.

Nations that kept their own currency are now happy about their decision.