Posted on 06/28/2012 8:45:17 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
A crisis summit to save the European Union’s single currency broke up in disarray early this morning after Italy and Spain threatened to block “everything” unless they got immediate eurozone aid to bring down their borrowing costs.
David Cameron left the Brussels summit at 1am local time, with nine other non-euro EU leaders as the 17 other eurozone member states continued in an emergency session to try and overcome the deadlock.
Spain and Italy blocked a flagship €120 billion “growth pact” as Mario Monti, the Italian Prime Minister, warned that there would be gridlock unless the EU mobilised its bailout funds to underwrite Italian and Spanish bonds.
As talks dragged on into the early hours of today, without any progress on long-term solution to fix the eurozone crisis, Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council of EU leaders, tried to play down the deepest splits since the European debt crisis erupted two years ago.
“There are two countries who are very keen to make sure that there is an agreement both on the long term measures and on the short term measures, but I wouldn't say there was any blockage,” he insisted late on Thursday night.
During a bad-tempered summit, Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel clashed over the pleas from Italy and Spain with Gremany dismissing their fears as “scaremongering” by allies.
Arriving at the EU’s 19th eurozone crisis summit in the last two years, the French president opened hostilities with Germany by declaring himself to be on the side of Italy and Spain.
“I have come here to get very rapid solutions to support countries in the greatest difficulty on the markets even though they have made considerable efforts to restore their public finances,” said the French leader.
The rift between eurozone members widened when Mark Rutte,
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Herman Van Rompuy, European Council President
At the European Summit...
"Just like normal.
"Those who are asking for money, make a line on the left.
"Those who are fed up of giving it, on the right.
"Anyone who has a solution, raise their hand.
"And everyone will have a coffee at 5pm."
So if they don’t get the opportunity to sign away their sovereignty, they will “block everything” (whatever that means). They can’t block a single thing, even if that’s what they wanted (and it isn’t). The only one serious about blocking stuff was the UK, and they got steamrolled over.
So are these numbers still correct?
Italy has to borrow at 6% to give bail out money to Spain at 3%.
Maybe they can bet on who wins the Euro 2012 final, the winner gets all of the money.
“...unless they got immediate eurozone aid to bring down their borrowing costs.”
####
= outright theft from the more fiscally responsible Euro Union members.
They must be learning from the heinous theft being perpetrated on productive, private-sector Americans.
The article is already out of date. Early this morning (Friday), Germany caved. Italy also beat Germany at soccer: “A double satisfaction,”said Mario Monti, the Italian Prime Minister.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.