It really looks like the EU is on the brink of financial collapse. I mean Spain has just been downgraded to BBB status, while France hasn't had a AAA rating for months. I believe it's only Britain and Germany left as big economies with AAA rating and Britain isn't even in the Euro so if Germany goes tits up it's really going to go down the pan.

How's this shit looking in the other countries? At the moment it all seems OK in Germany but I really can't see it lasting for long. And there seems to be a lot of arrogance here from the Germans regarding that.

I think the Euro is going to stay long time like Dollar, Yen and Chinese Yuan.

I think that the root of problem is basically this globalized economic model and , at the bottom line , the whole capitalist system (at least its ultra liberal version were living today).

Of course austerity isnt working for the countries economies , but its working fine for the imf and all the market sharks that own part of the countries bonds.

Let me tell you how things hapened in greece , where i live.

In the 80's , not many years after the dictatorship the "socialist" goverment built a huge dysfunctional state mechanism and started giving away money and public servant jobs at the people. Greeks were convinced that they would live milking the state cow and left the corrupt goverments party.

The 90's came and economic scandals were emerging but we were surely witnessing just the tip of the iceberg since the corruption was really deep into the media too.For example buisnessmen owning the big tv stations and newspapers , were the same that took the biggest construction jobs for the state. so it was (and still is) all pretty much concieled.

Of course modern Greeks (having pretty much nothing in common with their far ancestors) would only get into politics or syndicalism when they would have some personal profit.

Things went on like that and then came the euro. And the whole consumer culture wich came along with the banks giving away credit cards and loans like they were beans.

Thats one part of the problem and i gave this brief , and highly superficial retrospective so that you can understand what happened when Greece started its great journey with the eu bank and the imf...

Because as these were happening greeks were forced (or convinced) to practically quit producing.The agricultural production was destroyed , Greeks would import oranges when the greek oranges were rotting unsold because they were not cheap enough. Of course the liberal capitalist goverment let this happen.Thats a liberal ecomony.Alongside they let the dealers cartels control the prices of the goods. I dont know how you call that....       At the same time retail prices were going up as hell....

Of course stupid Greeks didnt care. The eu fund for the agriculture would make up for their losses and allow them to live the "euro dream" , with nice cars and bouzouki entertainment and the easy money from the banks gave them time to focus on real national issues like the eurovision song contest , the euro football cup and the olympic games.....

The olympic games were practically the beggining of the end. Huge amounts of money spent on useless infrastructure , but even more taken "beneath the table" as bribes.

The rich industrial countries of the north and their industries were making huge amounts of money (call me siemens....) Money that they couldnt be making if there was a true economic , and not only monetary union. But who would want that?

The bedt crisis came and everything burst like a bubble. Except corruption which kept strong on the (not so) underground.Greece went into the imf. They help us , with high intrest rates , so that we have the money we need to pay back the interests. Nice deal huh?

So now all europe is debating on austerity or development. Thats no debate for me. Because in this globally corrupt system , development is going to happen with the exact same way. Giving away whats best in a really cheap price , offering cheap labour to multinational sharks , destroying whats left of the enviroment.....

Its time for the people to start building their own.Creating structures with no help from anyone. Collective working and (re)building society on a different basis. Now is the time for us to do it , but dont fool yourselves ,this is coming to a country near you , maybe you own... 

We have to educate ourselves ,and act locally but think globally....

p.s im no political or economics specialist (as you propably understood from my post) and my whole analysis was highly superficial. I could write a lot more but i already feel bad for the lenght of my post (and its partial irrelevance to the topic). I consider this to be an intro.I'm really into discussing the situation. Share your thoughts and ill be back. 

It seems to me the German austerity isn't working. Britain has so much debt I'm surprised that they are still functioning.  Ireland is a good example of how austerity is not working.  They are suffering with 14% unemployment and 30% unemployment with young adults.  The German chancellor won't give up this stupid idea of austerity. I give some more time before Germany will single-handedly destroy Europe without having firing a single bullet.

I don't really know about 'other countries,' but in the U.S. it's looking increasingly as if Obama's re-election is going to come down to what Merkel and the ECB decides to do in the summer-early fall months.  And that has me pissed and depressed because the GOP seems to be embracing the same myth of austerity that they champion. 

Here, you're apparently not allowed to publicly call for Romney's taxes from his Bain years to be released w/out being called a socialist or class warrior.  Are voters so gullible that they actually believe Mitt's policies will jump-start the job market?  We'll see, I guess, but so far the Obama crowd seems to be afraid of really putting it to him.  In these perilous times, waiting for the convention will be too late.    

I would also say that because of the geographical location Australasia can trade more with Asia which so far has not gone into any stupid currency experiments.

If Germany pulls through this I really think it will be a case similar to how Scotland lost its political independence to England. Country makes stupid financial decisions, goes bankrupt, needs bailout, bailout comes with political unity. Ireland ironically fought and won independence from Britain in 1922 and 90 years later looks like it's going to lose it to the Germans.

I heard on the radio this week that all the major German banks were downgraded. I didn't catch the rest of the story cause I was heading off to work. Apparently over here in New Zealand we're a lot better off than the rest of world, mainly thanks to our close economic ties to Australia, who are also doing a lot better than the rest of world.

As far as I'm concerned the shit's gonna hit the fan big time at some point this year in regard to the world economy.