Europe

[AzariLoveIran]

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Portuguese stock market crashed because of Moody downgrade of Portugal sovereign debt to JUNK

This a war between American Dollar and Euro

Americans sabotaging EURO

This a WAR (wars are always for economic reason) .. American revenge on Europe



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[Torchwood]

[Colonel Sun]

[AzariLoveIran]

[Endovelico]

This is capitalism at its best. Time for another bloody revolution...

[AzariLoveIran]

[Sparky]

More Tyresome fantasy than actual plot to erase the value of the $$$, really.

[YMix]

[Simple Minded]

[AzariLoveIran]

[AzariLoveIran]

[skyhook77sfg]

ALERTS TO THREATS IN 2011 EUROPE


The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide."
The only two higher levels in France are "Collaborate" and "Surrender." The rise was precipitated by a recent
fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability.

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent events in Libya and have therefore raised their security level
from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross."
The English have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out.
Terrorists have been re-categorized from "Tiresome" to "A Bloody Nuisance."
The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from "Pissed Off" to "Let's get the Bastards." They don't have any other levels.
This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 300 years.

Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing."
Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides."

The Germans have increased their alert state from...
"Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs."
They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbor" and "Lose."

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual;
the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed
subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from "No worries" to "She'll be alright, Mate."
Two more escalation levels remain: "Crikey! I think we'll need to cancel the barbie this weekend!"
and "The barbie is cancelled." So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

John Cleese - British writer, actor and tall person

AND

one bloody bright brit

[Colonel Sun]

[Endovelico]

Strange things are happening in Europe.

1. Unable to cope with a more diverse society and with a loss of cultural certainties, a number of European countries - nearly all in northern Europe - have opted for supporting populist, racist and near-fascist political parties. Soon some of these parties will hold power or participate in government. As a result immigration laws will be tightened up, support for less competitive countries within the EU will fade away, and the very survival of the EU will be put into question.

2. These countries seem unable to grasp the fact that their prosperity has been based on their southern parties lack of competitiveness, and that economic collapse in those southern countries will be translated into economic decline at home. The solution cannot be punishing the less competitive countries, but helping them to become more competitive, so that their increased prosperity will feed demand for goods and services everywhere.

3. The chances that northern European countries will recognize this are very slim, so we should be prepared for a collapse of the eurozone and of the EU itself.

4. An integrated Europe makes a lot of sense but it cannot be based purely on German phobias. An integrated Europe must be primarily a tool for growth and development, and for a common approach to regional and world problems. Presently this idea seems to be present only in southern European countries which, because of their economic woes, are less capable of making their voice heard.

5. We could soon see a movement arising in those southern countries, to create a new European entity including only countries from the Mediterranean rim, such as Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria, joined in a new monetary union and willing to create a confederacy and a confederate government. With a currency weaker than the euro and the dollar, the new entity could become more competitive and grow, based partially on the development of their internal market. By being willing to associate with other Mediterranean countries, like Turkey, the Maghreb countries, Israel and Lebanon, the new entity could have the means and the opportunity to grow for several decades. By being ethnically and culturally more diverse, those countries would have less problems with immigration and remain demographically more dynamic.

6. While northern European countries, on their own, would tend to link economically and politically with the US, the new Mediterranean union would tend to establish links with Latin America, another region with a strong growth potential. As a result, the political and economical centre of gravity of the western hemisphere would tend to shift to the south and help shaping the 22nd century.

I'm willing to put my efforts at the service of such an idea.

[Simple Minded]

[Endovelico]

[Alexis]

[Simple Minded]

[Torchwood]

[Endovelico]

[Endovelico]

I can't help noticing how little activity there is on this thread. Maybe there are too few Europeans on this board to feed it, but I would have expected more people - Americans and Asians - to realize that what happens in Europe is of concern to everyone. On a practical point of view but also from a political science perspective. I hope this will not become too much of a monologue, but I will continue contributing to this thread's difficult survival.

[noddy]

i wish europe well fwiw but have little to offer thats relevant - i do enjoy reading the subset you post, so dont feel its in vain.

from a geopolitical point of view - the southern hemisphere has completely and utterly pointed to china now, in australia we barely get american or european economic news anymore, its all about asia - very much a change from the past but correct for our geographical and economic realities - we only get the occaisional updates on your doom n gloom but they dont affect us directly.

the old adage of america getting a sniffle and the world getting a cold has not proven quite as relevant as once it was...

europe and america have been in hospital with pneumonia for several years now and provided china and india keep on trucking with internal growth (which is by no means garunteed) the southern hemisphere hasnt really gone backwards at all, far from it...

you are quite correct i believe, in looking to south america for growth and hedges against western denial of reality - they can only go up and the west is living in a dream world that it doesnt seem able to wake up from, a stagnant, comfort driven world that is paid for on credit by other people suffering with the "hard work" bit.

im not going to post much anyway, im far to cynical about the need for collapse before their is change that is meaningful - junkies give up cold turkey when they really want to give up, otherwise its always tommorrow and tommorrow never comes.

[Simple Minded]

[Simple Minded]

Stratfor:

It’s hard to be bullish on much in Europe these days. The government bonds of Ireland, Portugal and Greece have all been downgraded to junk, the Europeans been sent back to the drawing board by the markets on their new bailout regimen and now the markets are talking about Italy being the next country to suffer a default. It’s easy to see why: next to Greece, Italy has the highest debt in Europe at about 120 percent of GDP. Its government is, shall we say, eccentric, and it has the highest debt relative to GDP of any country in the world with the exception of course of Greece and Japan. The sheer size of that debt, some 2 trillion euro, is larger than the combined government debts of the three states that are currently in receivership combined. In fact, it’s more than double the total envisioned amount of the bailout fund in its grandest incarnation.

Italy certainly deserves to be under the microscope, but STRATFOR does not see it as ripe for a bailout. Unlike Ireland or Portugal or Greece, Italy has a strong and large banking system, or at least healthy as compared to say, Ireland. So while Italy’s debt load is 120 percent of GDP, only 50 percent of GDP needs to be handled by outside investors, the banks handle everything else. But let’s keep such optimism in context. It’s now been 16 months since the first bailout of Greece back in March of last year and it’s becoming ever more apparent that the fear isn’t so much that the contagion from the weak states will infect the strong ones, but there are just a lot more weak states out there than anybody gave the Europeans credit for when this all started. So long as there is no federal entity with the political and fiscal capacity of dealing with the crisis, this is just going to get worse and it’s only a matter of months before what we think of as real states such as Belgium, Austria and Spain, are to be starting to flirt with conservatorship themselves.

Ad hoc crisis management can deal, has dealt, with the small peripheral economies, but it’s not capable of dealing with the problem that is now looming: potential financial instability and multi-trillion euro economies. With the illusions of stability that have sustained the euro to this point being peeled away one by one with every revelation of new debt improprieties, it’s only a matter of time before the euro collapses. This is of course unless one of three things happens. Option one is for the stronger nations to just directly subsidize the weaker nations, basically having the North transfer wealth in large amounts to the South year after year after year. Conservatively, that’s one trillion euros a year, and it is difficult to see how that would be politically palatable in a place like Germany.

Option two is to create something called Eurobonds. Right now the markets are scared of anything that has the word Portugal or Greece attached, and Greek debt is currently selling for about 16 percent versus the 3 percent of Germany. Eurobonds would allow European states to issue debt as a collective, so the full faith and credit of the European Union would back up any debt, which means that this 13 percent premium on Greek debt would largely disappear overnight. Of course that would mean that the European whole would be ultimately responsible for those debts at the end of the day, which means after a few years we’d be back in the same situation we are right now, with the debt ultimately landing on Germany’s doorstep once again. In STRATFOR’s view, the only difference between direct subsidization in the Eurobond plan would be when the Germans pay, now or later.

The third and final option is to simply print currency to buy up the government debt directly, either via the ECB or with the ECB granting a loan to the bailout fund to purchase the debt itself. This is an option that the Europeans are sliding toward because it puts off the hard decisions on political and economic power to another day. However it comes at a cost: inflation. Printing currency is a seriously inflationary business and for Europe this would put them in a double bind. Europe already has to import most of its energy, it already has a rapidly aging labor force and it already has very little free land upon which to build. Combined, this already makes the European Union the most inflationary of the world’s major developed economies, and that’s before you figure in printing currency.

[Simple Minded]