Posted on 05/07/2012 5:52:59 PM PDT by Steelfish
Eurozone Crisis: Merkel Tells Athens And Paris To Stick To Spending Limits Efforts to save the euro under threat after EU leaders' strategies collide with the wishes of voters in Greece and France
Ian Traynor 7 May 2012
Europe's 30-month effort to save the euro by slashing spending and debt levels risks turning into a crisis of political legitimacy after EU leaders' strategies collided spectacularly with the wishes of voters in Greece and France.
The impasse was most graphically demonstrated when Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, insisted Athens must comply with the stringent terms of its €130bn (£100bn) bailout even though more than 60% of the Greek electorate had voted for parties rejecting those terms.
Following a French election campaign in which she strongly backed the loser, Nicolas Sarkozy, and snubbed the president-elect, François Hollande, Merkel stressed her opposition to Hollande's central campaign pledge: reopening the euro's new rulebook, or fiscal pact.
"That's just not on," she told a Berlin press conference called to address the huge shift from right to left in France.
The first attempt to cobble together a new Greek government collapsed quickly when Antonis Samaras, the centre-right leader, called off negotiations. Greece appears to be on the brink of ungovernability as a result of a messy election triggered by the euro crisis. The stock market suffered its worse fall since 2008, losing as much as 8% of its value before closing 6.7% down. The country's banking index was 13% lower.
Market analysts shortened the odds against the country's chances of surviving in the single currency.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
“Europe’s 30-month effort to save the euro by slashing spending and debt levels...”
What slashing are they talking about?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2880997/posts
I’m going to buy Mel Brooks’ “Silent Movie” on DVD just so I can get a screen clip of the “Trash Can Size Popcorn” for this Euro-cagematch.
Exactly....there is no real spending cuts in Europe, just the growth of spending.....
At some time in the future quickly.... This will bite us in the ass....
The financial world is interconnected.... No way we don’t get hurt by the Euro crashing....
all these countries like Greece have borrowed a ton denominated in the Euro. what happens if they go off the euro? do they just totally default on all the euro denominated bonds or do they pay them? what haps if the euro ceases to exist, which seems likely?
do all the euro bonds go away or does someone try and figure out some conversion rate from say the drachma to the euro?
The Euro will collapse. This is really WWIII, and this time Germany will win. Scary stuff.
we've been duped, spitout, buried, and then dug up again to be duped again....
“This is really WWIII, and this time Germany will win. Scary stuff.”
Not sure about that. I was just in Munich and there are not any Germans there. Looked like the people were all from the Middle East.
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