Rachel Marsden
While your co-workers hover around the water cooler debating whether it matters if
Now replace "Greece" with "your bank." It suddenly matters a little more, doesn't it? What if your bank couldn't loan you money, give you a mortgage or allow you to ring up credit-card debt, all because the bank abruptly had much less with which to leverage your lifestyle since
Not that staying in the eurozone would prevent collapse, either. If anything, it would only hasten the demise of the other member states. The eurozone fell into this crisis due to the stunningly illogical idea that a cost-heavy system could support itself indefinitely. When reality slowly dawned on the European powers that be, they proposed a series of desperate tax grabs, many under the guise of environmentalism and climate change. Too little, too late, and way too scammy to be worth pursuing for any single national leader who risks being voted out of office as a result of martyring himself for
Sheer political will continues to be the only container keeping this high-entropy system from blasting into full chaos. The scene of former French President
The most troublesome thing of all is that logic and pragmatic realism, however painful, are still taking a back seat to short-term appetites. Voters in
New French President Francois Hollande was apparently mugged by reality on the way home from his victory party, as he admitted before even taking office that he'd discovered the fiscal situation in
I have no idea what goes on in the heads of anti-austerity French, Greeks or any other citizens of financially strapped European countries who think there's an alternative to austerity that's any less drastic than an entire systemic revamping of the welfare state and public service. Even austerity measures have had a minimal impact thus far, mainly because the situation is so dire in countries like
So what's the solution?
The best thing that could happen would be for the euro to be forced down in value to stimulate exports, to promote local products over foreign ones, and to boost domestic production -- similar to the way that
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- Let Sleeping Germans Lie
- Europe's Dilemma: Immigration and the Arab Spring
- France's Geopolitical Strategy
- Elections Could Shift European Union Away from Austerity, But Should They?
- Why France Elected a Socialist President
- French Elections Lesson
- Putin's Evolving Strategy in Europe
- Moscow's Vision for the Backyard
- Russia's relations with Central and Eastern Europe
- Britain's Geopolitical Strategy
- Under Putin, Russian Relations with United States Turn Icy Again
- Albania Still Working to Dispose of Stockpiled Ammunition
- Cyprus Gas Drilling Could be Geopolitical Accident Waiting to Happen
- Europe After the Crisis: How to Sustain a Common Currency
- Russia's Geopolitical Strategy
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- Turkey's Geopolitical Strategy
- Turkey: Twitter Cuts Two Ways
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