The BBC has an interesting (and very deluded) article on Europe, Greece, Germany, etc & their debt problems:
In October, Europe’s leaders reached yet another wide-ranging deal to prevent economic problems from causing financial meltdown in the eurozone.
For many onlookers, the issues they face may seem complicated and interconnected.
But essentially they boil down to four big dilemmas:
- Borrowers vs Lenders
- Austerity vs Growth
- Discipline vs Solidarity
- Europe vs the Nations
Actually, I think we can simplify much further.
There is one big dilemma:
- Delusion vs Reality
That delusion is that the global financial system can be so interconnected, and so leveraged that it can continue to exist in a state whereby the default of one small country can trigger a death spiral so severe that much of the system has to be bailed out over and over just to avoid the dreaded default cascade, and mass insolvency. The reality is that the system is so interconnected and leveraged (“too big to fail”) that it will keep failing and failing and failing until it is allowed to fail. Interconnection and leverage means fragility. What we need is independence (so that fragile things can fail without bringing down the entire system).
azizonomics 