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Indeed. Excepted that this is not a financial crisis. The financial crisis is just a catalyzer. The fundamental issue is state who continuously spend more th

Indeed. Excepted that this is not a financial crisis. The financial crisis is just a catalyzer. The fundamental issue is state who continuously spend more than what they made because states are run by politicians who can't count (because 99% of them are lawyers and lawyers can't count and they'll only accept advices from economists going their way: that is "more state"). We're now witnessing what happens when states spending more than what they make are running out of money. Of course socialists are trying to pretend it's a financial crisis and that without the financial crisis in the U.S. nothing would ever have gone wrong with all these highly socialists states in Europe spending more than they're making and creating an ever bigger state debt. Seriously who's buying that? When you're borrowing more money than what you make at one point payback time comes. And payback time is coming for socialists. And they don't like it.

scarmig 14y ago
For all the ranting about socialism, deeply social democratic countries--namely, countries like Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden--are doing mostly fine. If not for the Eurozone crisis, I'd say they'd be much better places economically than the USA, let alone a country like Cyprus or Greece. This is despite having more generous public sectors than the Mediterranean. Nor is it simply corruption, though there's PLENTY of that to go around. Lots of corrupt countries aren't about to spontaneously collapse. But it's not totally crazy to imagine Italy, Spain, and Greece collapsing into chaos by the end of April. Or, if you're a pessimist, by the end of March... It's sectoral imbalances and a deeply broken EU.
- ams6110 14y ago
  Norway is kind of a special case since they have oil. Denmark, Sweden... they have another decade or so before it hits there. Germany is such an industrial giant that again they are not your typical Eurozone country.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    Well, once you've explicitly excluded the quarter of Europe that counts as "rich" and "social democracy" as special cases, of course you won't have examples available that suggest that being an economically successful social democracy is possible. That doesn't even touch on the UK or France. Which, although certainly having their problems, also aren't the same kind of basket cases PIGS are. I excluded them initially because although they seem to have more severe problems than, say, Germany, they're still pretty economically successful and stable. By the time any of them get to a hypothetical debt crisis, the PIGS will have long-since imploded, and it'll be a totally different ballgame anyway that resists prediction.

scarmig 14y ago

For all the ranting about socialism, deeply social democratic countries--namely, countries like Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden--are doing mostly fine. If not for the Eurozone crisis, I'd say they'd be much better places economically than the USA, let alone a country like Cyprus or Greece. This is despite having more generous public sectors than the Mediterranean. Nor is it simply corruption, though there's PLENTY of that to go around. Lots of corrupt countries aren't about to spontaneously collapse. But it's not totally crazy to imagine Italy, Spain, and Greece collapsing into chaos by the end of April. Or, if you're a pessimist, by the end of March... It's sectoral imbalances and a deeply broken EU.

ams6110 14y ago
Norway is kind of a special case since they have oil. Denmark, Sweden... they have another decade or so before it hits there. Germany is such an industrial giant that again they are not your typical Eurozone country.
- scarmig 14y ago
  Well, once you've explicitly excluded the quarter of Europe that counts as "rich" and "social democracy" as special cases, of course you won't have examples available that suggest that being an economically successful social democracy is possible. That doesn't even touch on the UK or France. Which, although certainly having their problems, also aren't the same kind of basket cases PIGS are. I excluded them initially because although they seem to have more severe problems than, say, Germany, they're still pretty economically successful and stable. By the time any of them get to a hypothetical debt crisis, the PIGS will have long-since imploded, and it'll be a totally different ballgame anyway that resists prediction.