[Zeddicus]

That, and if Germany has half a brain, they’ll dump the Euro and go back to their own currency before they get dragged under with the PIIGS.

[mlocher]

That, and if Germany has half a brain, they’ll dump the Euro and go back to their own currency before they get dragged under with the PIIGS.

Unless they signed some type of fealty oath, that would be the thing go do.

[eleni121]

Problem is that Germans don't even have half a brain...and their economy is based on exports.

PIGS??? I would suggest that the real PIGS in this are the Germans. They've been bailed out repeatedly even after having started two conflagrations.

AS for dumping the EURO - it's been an abject failure. Allowing Deutchbank and criminal investment houses like G-S to do back door deals with crony pol/pals in government is not what this “project” was supposed to be about... time for reflection and resolve: dump the EURO and damn the EU.

[your local physicist]

Looking back at economic history, starting in the late 90s the western world became complacent and overconfident about future economic growth. By 1997, the OECD nations had gone 16 years with only one brief recession and they started to take economic growth for granted. Then every stupid financial & economic decision everyone could possibly make seems to have occurred in the next ten years from 1998 to 2007: the euro currency was launched with no administrative mechanism to enforce critically important fiscal discipline within the euro zone, then we had a massive stock market bubble in 2000, followed by a real estate bubble and an incredibly huge amount of dumb real estate lending and borrowing throughout the western world. During all this craziness, a lot of complacent individuals and institutions also bought way too much sovereign debt from fiscally undisciplined countries like Greece, Portugal, and Spain. Now they're stuck with sovereign bonds that are gradually turning into junk bonds.

Meanwhile the European policy makers were thinking in terms of years while dealing with this crisis, pondering all the long-term implications of bailing out the Greeks, while the financial markets are thinking in terms of weeks to get a solution to this debt problem. The Europeans waiting way too long to bail out Greece and now the slide in bond prices and the euro is a strong established trend and has become emotional and self-sustaining at least for another couple of weeks or more. I hope people learn something from this mega-recession and get back to building strong businesses in the private sector instead of trying to build wealth through all this borrowing, lending, and speculating on stocks and real estate.