P.I.G.S (Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain) could bring Euroland to its knees

The Telegraph ^ | 02/11/2010 | Edmund Conway

[SeekAndFind]

Pigs are dispensable; or, at least, so says the Ministry of Defence, which yesterday owned up to detonating more than 100 of the poor sow-and-sows in its bid to improve the lot of soldiers blasted by roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is enlightened attitude that cannot be said to be shared by our European neighbours, who were last night on the brink of endorsing the biggest pig-rescue mission in history.

Of course, in this case, the PIGS in question are not animals but countries – or, to be more precise, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain. In crisis talks in Brussels today, European leaders will discuss how to prevent Greece from imploding, and tipping its Mediterranean neighbours over the financial precipice. To the great horror of their more sensible Teutonic counterparts, these countries surfed on the tide of cheap credit provided by euro membership and generated a debt bubble so enormous that it threatens to take down their economies.

Investors are terrified that those at the sharpest end – in particular, the Greeks – will fail to honour their debts, and are demanding an ever-higher interest rate from them. If such a rate is imposed, Greece could soon, like every debt recidivist, find itself so hopelessly mired in interest payments that it will no longer hope to escape from its debt. It may already be there.

So far, so familiar. Greece is not the first and will not be the last country to face fiscal oblivion during the crisis. But what sets Greece and its porcine neighbours apart from, for instance, this sceptred, indebted isle, is that they are part of the euro. Should one of them default, the very act could bring the entire currency down, plunging the world economy's most important continent into financial and economic chaos.

[Joe Boucher]

One more thing C19fan,
What does that stand for C19?

[C19fan]

19th century.

[Joe Boucher]

See?
I knew it was someting simple.
I’m just not too smart.
Thanks/thanks a lot.

:-)

[SeekAndFind]

The disciplined ones like Germany and Japan will fail too

I am not sure if we can count Japan as a disciplined country when its debt as a percentage of GDP is WORSE than the USA and one of the highest in the world !! ( only Zimbabwe's is worse ).

See this visual :

[Viiksitimali]

“(Plan for establishing) an economic organization ... through mutual customs agreements ... including France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Austria, Poland, and perhaps Italy, Sweden, and Norway”.
The German “September Plan” to impose an economic union on the vanquished nations of Europe following a military victory, 1914
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/germany-fourth-reich.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septemberprogramm

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

But if not, there is only one alternative: take fiscal control of the Greek and Spanish government spending.

The Greek unions are rioting because they do not want their retirement age to go from 61 to 63. Any real austerity would cause a revolution, probably in Portugal and Spain also. Meanwhile German voters do not want to subsidize workers who are less frugal and less hardworking than themselves.

[mewzilla]

On a related noted from the homefront, PIIGS meet the CANINes...

Want to Control Deficit? Rein in State Spending