Frank settled down in the Valley and hung his wild years on a nail
The disconnect in Europe just gets worse and worse. (…) There are going to be tears and lots of them somewhere. Greek three-year rates are now at 21%. (…)
On Saturday Jurgen Stark, an executive board member of the ECB, warned that a restructuring of debt in any of the troubled eurozone countries could trigger a banking crisis even worse than that of 2008. (…)
In a well-done column from Zero Hedge, which discusses a controversial Citibank report, we learn that, “No country with Debt/GDP ratio of more than 150% has ever avoided a default anyways. Why would Greece be different?” (…)
But the Greeks are not the only ones who are unhappy. I wrote about the Finns last week. Now we jump to a marvelous Wolfgang Münchau piece from the Financial Times, which gives us additional insight and points out that the Germans are getting rancorous: “A premature Greek default would change everything. As would the failure by the EU and Portugal to agree a rescue package in time; or an escalation in the EU’s dispute with Ireland over corporate taxes; or a ratification failure of the ESM in the German, Finnish or Dutch parliaments; or a German veto for a top-up loan for Greece in 2012; or the refusal by the Greek parliament to accept the new austerity measures; or a realisation that the Spanish cajas are in much worse shape than recognised, and that Spain cannot raise sufficient capital.”
photo { Jeremy Dine }
