Para reflexão

"The Greek people are being punished for Europe's errors" ("Yet let us be honest. This is not a bail-out for Greece. It is a bail-out for European creditors that account for most of Greece's €391bn external debt (163pc of GDP). As such it is the first line of defence against greater sums at risk across Club Med. The EU rescue shifts the debacle onto taxpayers in order to prevent a systemic crisis, just like the bank bail-outs after the Lehman failure. The question is whether German Landesbanken with wafer-thin capital ratios can withstand a second crisis after losing so much already on US subprime debt.
...
Yet the Greeks are being singled out for punishment under the rescue terms. Mr Johnson says they will have to transfer 8pc to 9pc of GDP each year to foreign creditors from 2012 onwards.

No nation will tolerate such debt servitude for long.
.
This crisis stems from the original sin of EMU and the collective self-deception that lured debtors and creditors alike into excess. To lecture Greece gets us nowhere. Default will happen one way or another. So will contagion. ")

.

"A Greek bail-out at last but no real solution" ("So will this stave off insolvency? It is important to distinguish the near-term insolvency as a result of the failure to roll over existing debt, and the country’s long-term solvency position. This deal, I am confident, will solve the first issue. As I predicted last week, Greece will not default this year. But I am still sticking with my second prediction that Greece will eventually default. The numbers simply look too bad.")

.

" Gonzalo Lira: “Systemic Contradictions”: The Eurozone De Facto Currency Peg, and the Death Spiral We Are Currently Witnessing" ("But by the time they all realize that the GR-€ is destroying their economies—much like the dollar-peg in ’82 trashed the Latin American economies—it will be too late. The European Union will be wrecked, much as Latin America was wrecked in ’82. And that crisis ushered in all sorts of foolish craziness in many many places.

God Alone knows what will happen once the Eurozone is wrecked.

We are currently watching this wreckage—we just don’t realize it. Greece is not an aberration—it’s not even the canary in the coal mine: It’s the beginning. The GR-€ is wreaking havoc on all the other countries of the Eurozone, starting of course with the weakest, Greece. But it won’t end there—far from it. The GR-€ will take out, in no particular order, Portugal, Italy, Spain, until it eventually hits France.

...

Reuters is reporting that a “senior [Greek] official” said that, over the next three years, Greece will need an additional €40 billion—this is, on top of the €30 billion that were pledged today by Europe and additional €10 by the IMF.

In other words, THIS YEAR’S bailout for Greece is €40 billion, while 2011 and 2012, they’ll need an ADDITIONAL €40 billion.

That is, €80 billion ($108 billion) to tide Greece over until 2012—just Greece. Nobody else. €80 billion to salvage an economy whose nominal GDP for 2009 (according to Wikipedia) was €250 billion.")
.
"Greece Saved For Now - Is Portugal Next?" ("The Portuguese therefore are not at all out of the woods. If they do not start making serious moves towards cutting their deficit, they are next for a test. (Moi ici: Pois, depois digam que a culpa é de Miguel Frasquilho)
.
Surely the eurozone will bail Portugal out also - but where would it stop after that? The stronger Europeans, by coming to Greece's rescue at this time with little conditionality, are effectively showing all the weaker nations that they too can get a package.")