What the hell do we do about the Euro?

[Richard Roman]

Far from promoting growth and political solidarity, which is what the single currency was supposed to do, the euro is in fact achieving the opposite effect, by condemning the eurozone to long term recession and now extreme political infighting. Again, it cannot be right to persist with something which is achieving the opposite of what it was meant to simply because the alternatives are thought to be worse.

 

What does anyone here think? This is serious

[Richard Roman]

The article I posted below gets pretty heavy but it is worth reading through

It is essentially an e-mail debate amongst some pretty serious economists

It starts of with anatole kaletsky of the Times stating:

Anatole: Clausewitz, the Prussian military theorist, said in his reflections on the Napoleonic period that “war is the continuation of policy by other means”. If so, then it would seem that Germany is again at war with Europe; at least in the sense that German policy is trying to achieve in Europe the characteristic objectives of war: the redrawing of international boundaries and the subjugation of foreign people.

I think Sebastien would find it interesting!

[Richard Roman]

The Euro Debate Gets Philosophical

Europe is rapidly approaching the denouement, the Endgame, of its currency experiment. The outcome is not clear, at least to your humble analyst, as the debates rage and there are huge pluses and minuses the 17 nations must decide upon. But the proverbial road down which the can is tumbling and clattering, kicked along haphazardly, is coming to its end, and soon a rather sharp turn, either to the left or to the right, will be required. Let us hope they choose wisely.

http://uk.mg1.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.gx=1&.rand=c164tltt6v9bk

Very interesting article

[马吉帝 Majdi]

Great article, Thanks Richard. I think it would make a fair deal if China bailout the Euro zone in exchange for technologies (excluding military ones). 

Thanks for the "save the euro", Julien. Feels great to be behind the financial dashboard of the world largest economic bloc, even for playing ;-) 

[Richard ridealgh]

http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/2011-12/03/content_24060877.htm

There are five reasons why participation in any bailout plan for the Eurozone area is not in China's best  interest.

[Julien Cordry/朱可夫]

Let's play "Save the euro" with the European Central Bank.

[Fin MacDonald]

At a gathering for the Nation Magazine last week, Naomi Klein said,“The solutions to the ecological crisis (can be seen) as a single, single crisis, born of a single root, which is unrestrained corporate greed that can never have enough, and that is that mentality that trashes people and that trashes the planet, and that would shatter the bedrock of the continent to get out the last—the last
drops of fuel and natural gas. It’s the same mentality that would shatter the bedrock of societies to maximize profits.”

Today, the apparatus for the accumulation of wealth, which is continuing this kind of rapacious looting of the earth, is the corporation.  Think Exxon & BP in Prince Edward Sound;  Chevron in Nigeria and Ecuador; BP in Florida; Halliburton in New Orleans; Monsanto in Anniston,
Alabama—the list is inexhaustible . . . in Cote D’ivoire there is rampant slavery for the want of just a cent or two per kilo of cocoa beans, while Hershey grosses a lot more per year than the GDP of that country.  Hershey is bound by law to make those pennies for its investors.   This kind of obduracy recalls the famine in India the latter part of the 19^th century, when wheat exports to England went up and the dying populace stumbled into work camps to dig canals on 1,000 calories a day, according to the Temple Law, which was thought to teach those lazy Indians a thing or two about the virtue of industry. If history is any sort of indicator, austerity does not repair the economies of nations;it just enriches an international elite and commitslarceny within t..., a pattern which has held true in virtually every country in South America as well as Poland and the USSR, and that is by no means a complete list.  Thereare a great many alternatives and potential solutionsout there that have to do with restructuring present systems, but a good start would be to reform corporations and tax the wealthy.

 

 

[Sebastien Bossard]

ah ça ira, ça ira, ça ira, les aristocrates à la lanterne.....

[马吉帝 Majdi]

In my opinion the Euro can survive in through either: 

1- Euro countries enter into a large war (of course not against each other). 

2- The citizens of countries with high debt accept tough austerity plans with the economy showing signs of recovery. 

[Richard Roman]

here is an interesting article from todays daily Telegraph

Death of a currency as eurogeddon approaches

It's time to think what hitherto markets have regarded as unthinkable – that the euro really is on its last legs.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/jeremy-warner/8913884/De...

[Richard Roman]

Wow! You guys are way ahead of me here!