Posted on 11/01/2011 2:36:14 PM PDT by markomalley
Greece's startling decision to call a referendum on last week's EU summit deal has set off wild tremors across the eurozone, pushing Italy to the brink of a perilous downward spiral.
The country's ruling Pasok party appeared to be splintering on Tuesdsay night, leaving it unclear whether the governent of premier George Papandreou can survive a parliamentary vote of confidence on Friday.
Signs that the EU's pain-stakingly negotiated Grand Plan is unravelling within days has been a profound shock to confidence.
A frantic search for safe havens led to the second biggest one-day fall ever recorded in Europe's AAA bond yields. Ten-year German Bund yields tumbled 25 basis points to 1.77pc, with similar moves in non-EMU Swedish and Danish debt. British Gilt yields fell to 2.2pc.
Italy took the brunt of the punishment. Spreads over Bunds spiked to a crisis-high of 459 basis points before the European Central Bank came to the rescue. Spanish spreads reached 384.
Andrew Roberts from RBS said Italy's debt stress is "dangerously close to a level that could cause pandemonium in financial markets".
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Buchanan on Medved’s show was talking about the growing movement for the northern Italian provinces to split with the south. Said they consider themselves Celtic and not the same people as the Roman southerners - whom they consider leaches.
If there is a melt down in Italy it could really get nasty there, maybe even civil war.
When Spain, Portugal and Greece leave the Euro, it will become, for all practical purposes, the Deutschmark. Will the French be content to live under a German-dictated economic system.
History shows that that they will.
Now that is a very ineresting development. Francis Fukuyama, in Trust contrasts northern Italy with the South - and Sicily in particular as high trust vs low trust societies. In southern Italy, and according to Fukuyama, the lack of trust outside family units prevents the formation of the kinds of bonds and associations that are necessary for larger scale and more pervasive wealth creation. The opposite is true in northern Italy.
One of the chapters in my book is titled, "High Trust, Low Trust, No Trust." I contend that an essential part of the Marxist, Machiavellian Gramscian meme is to destroy the conditions that have made America a high trust - and thus, a prosperous - society. We have arguably been on a trajectory that has eroded confidence in virtually all of our institutions - and each other. This is the reason I think that those like Madoff were deliberately allowed to pillage and plunder for years with impunity. The goal for those who made sure that Madoff and others like him were not prosecuted until it was far too late was not money. It was never money - it was the destruction of something far more precious - the unwritten social contract of trust that makes all else possible.
This is in fact the model pursued with great success by every Communist totalitarian regime in modern times. With results we all know too well.
Lega Nord has been going on for a long, long time. It was well entrenched when I was there in the 90s.
And who exactly would they fight when everyone agrees that its the politicians that need the reckoning? More likely a repeat event of Marie Antoinette.
painstaking?
you will impose austerity like a good slave.
you will take a 50% haircut in order to buy the slaves.
you will have imf overseers to control your country.
The only pain to the EU was the EU aristocrats who wanted to keep their shrimp cocktails.
Italy is now the new firewall.
I see no incentive for Italy to sacrifice itself at the altar of the EU aristocracy.
The euro is going to start crashing tommorrow.
(and it is tommorrow in austrailia)
The bump up last week was probably and insider window to have the big boys bail. The CH 11 of cozine’s co was probably in anticipation.
Looks like the southern European experiment with socialism, corruption and laziness is coming to a close...again. Northerners are tired of supporting them.
What’s taking Jesus so long to get down here ? What’s He waiting for ? Our countries are supposed disintegrate and go down in flames after He comes for us, not before.
In the good old days the english would have both Greece and Italy taking their medicine.
Come on Germany,,,,,,,
All you need to do is give both of them Anatolia.
It always worked for the brits, problem solved.
What, two sides fighting to be the first to surrender?
One of the things Saddam Hussein did in Iraq was, at one point, to decree “Your old last name is gone. Your new last name is your father’s first name.”
All of a sudden, Bill, Sam and Becky Smith, children of John Smith, were Bill John, Sam John and Becky John.
And the children of Bill, Sam and Becky (married to Fred) are no longer Smiths, they are, respectively, “Bills”, “Sams” and “Freds”.
You could no longer determine (or even guess at) family relationships by name.
Apparently He didn’t get the memo.
“What’s taking Jesus so long to get down here ?”
A quiet civil war is quite possible in Italy. The northern provinces pay the way for the south provinces. The north begrudging the south intensifies daily. Something to watch.
That's why the Founders gave us a Republic
By the way, we have amended ourselves into a Democracy, and time is running out.
He’ll come right on schedule my friend. Perfect timing is part of His character. Not one lost sheep will slip through His hands.
Remember everyone that we are talking about Italy, where there have been 40 governments since the end of WW Two
Eurozone on the Brink of Disaster: ‘It’s All Over. The Government is About to Collapse’
futures market...
http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/stocks/futures/
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