OT Spain.

[harry]

So the have found =80100 billion for Spain. Where does all this money come from? Taxpayers in Deutschland?

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

Printing presses, of course. Or the press of a keypad.

[Terry Casey]

Blackboard seen at a stall selling olive oil and olives last week:

Help save the German economy: Buy Greek products!

[Brian Gaff]

Don't be daft, none of it exists at all, its just a devaluation which leaves a lot of bits of paper worth less each time. The whole point here is that you cannot have a monetary union, when the countries concerned have such different economies. This was predicted years ago, but they just went ahead and fudged it by pretending they were all the same. Sooner or later, like water, the lowest common denominator prevails, ie all the liquid runs to the lowest part of the terrain. You have to make stuff others want to buy to create wealth, you need a tighthand on taxation and wages in all countries to make it work. Its a bloody mess, what can one say?

Brian

[Geoff Pearson]

China - we gave them all our money to pay for goods which we no longer make. That's everything.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

They'd only be bargains if you buy at the bottom of the market. And no one knows what/when this will be.

[Rob]

IIUC - they'd have borrowed the money via EU and IMF-linked 'banks' - state institution moderated funding houses. They in turn get their money from nation states. Who in turn get their money either by borrowing themselves (issuing long term bonds, for example, which are bought by private companies, individuals and other countries), or lend straight from revenue (countries like China).

Spain would have been given access to the money on near-crippling interest rates. This makes default a real possibility - a situation virtually unheard of until recently. I don't think Greece is in a position of actual default. It's simply 'rescheduled' - but default is likely sooner rather than later - especially after the elections.

I've not read the details of the 100B - but that's my guess

Rob

[Mike Tomlinson]

En el artículo , Rob escribió:

They've actually got it at a relatively low rate, but it's conditional on them allowing Eurocrats to control their budget ever more tightly.

Now the Irish, Portuguese and Greeks are rumbling about how Spain has had their bailout on more favourable terms than they had to agree to to get theirs, and are threatening to demand renegotiation of their bailout terms.

Spain's cost of borrowing has reached levels where they can't afford to issue any more debt, and there isn't going to be any more bailout money, so I reckon a Spexit is inevitable. As you said, the results of the Greek election (and very probably a Grexit) will be the trigger.

[Dave Liquorice]

Did anyone catch "Surviving Progess" the other night?

that this "financial crisis" stuff is a fairly regular occurance with civilisations and the only ways out are for that civilisation to collapse or for the debt to be written off and start again. The latter requires the oligarchy at the top to take the hit, so we all know what is going to happen don't we...