Greece, the EU, and the euro

[unixronin]

cipherpunk pointed me at this Washington Post article rather late last night.  I was a little busy to respond at the time, but was immediately reminded of this recent analysis of the same problem from STRATFOR.  The capsule summary of the report is that after falsifying its fiscal status (with the assistance of several large US banks) in order to qualify for EU membership, Greece has continued to spend at a rate far exceeding its resources to the point that, if Greece does not receive a bailout, it is in imminent danger of defaulting on its debts.  Of course, giving Greece such a bailout opens a door no-one wants opened, not least Germany, likely the only EU member in a fiscal position to be the source of the bailout.  This puts Germany in a difficult spot between two almost equally objectionable alternatives, as well as exposing one of the underlying economic weaknesses of the EU — the ability of fiscally irresponsible member nations to drag down and destabilize the EU as a whole through its currency, with very little the EU can do about it.

(The above-cited report linked by permission of Strategic Forecasting.)

Comments

[randwolf]

(Oh, this belongs here, not over on LJ)

Some notes on this:

- Greece is not a very big part of the EU economy. See:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/euro-perspective/

- France is also involved, see:
http://baselinescenario.com/2010/02/07/euro-falling-us-recovery-under-threat (also good general analysis)

- Spain, on the other hand, which did everything right, and is a pretty big part of the EU economy, is also in trouble.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/opinion/15krugman.html

- Goldman-Sachs participated in this disaster; may even have persuaded Greece to undertake it:
http://baselinescenario.com/2010/02/14/goldman-goes-rogue-%e2%80%93-special-european-audit-to-follow/

- Somewhere (not sure where) I've seen an analysis comparing German neo-mercantilism to Chinese. It's discouraging; if neo-mercantilism is the order of the day we will see much less trade, and more hardships.

[unixronin]

Either place is fine. :)