European Collapse? Germany should go independant.

[Neubarth]

GERMANY WANTS OUT!!! I DO NOT BLAME THEM. THEY CAN PRESERVE THEIR ECONOMY FAR BETTER IF THEY DO NOT HAVE TO FUND THE FAILING EURO. FOLKS, THE WORLD IS IN THE MOST MASSIVE GROWING DEPRESSION IN HISTORY.

Poehl Says German Euro Rescue Would Be Pandora’s Box
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Former Bundesbank President Karl Otto Poehl said Germany should resist increasing pressure to rescue other euro-area countries as the financial crisis brings some of them to the brink of default.

“A bailout of a debtor country from a surplus country like Germany would be like opening the box of Pandora,” he said yesterday at an event at the London School of Economics. “It’s a very dangerous course that we will enter” and “I’m very much against it, many people in Germany are against it, but the political pressure will increase, it’s obvious.”

German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck signaled his government’s openness to rescues when he said last week that some euro nations are “getting into difficulties” and that Europe’s biggest economy would show its “ability to act.” Poehl said that the International Monetary Fund should seek to intervene instead.

“The IMF was designed for this purpose,” he said. “But the problem is that the IMF has not enough money. They need an increase in capital. That’s the most urgent reform we need.”

Government leaders of the Group of 20 should agree to “double or triple” the IMF’s capital to fight the crisis and help out euro-region members or European countries such as Ukraine, which is “close to bankruptcy,” Poehl said.

CONTINUES AT LINK
Bloomberg.com: Germany

 

[PoliticalChic]

GERMANY WANTS OUT!!! I DO NOT BLAME THEM. THEY CAN PRESERVE THEIR ECONOMY FAR BETTER IF THEY DO NOT HAVE TO FUND THE FAILING EURO. FOLKS, THE WORLD IS IN THE MOST MASSIVE GROWING DEPRESSION IN HISTORY.

Poehl Says German Euro Rescue Would Be Pandora’s Box
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Former Bundesbank President Karl Otto Poehl said Germany should resist increasing pressure to rescue other euro-area countries as the financial crisis brings some of them to the brink of default.

“A bailout of a debtor country from a surplus country like Germany would be like opening the box of Pandora,” he said yesterday at an event at the London School of Economics. “It’s a very dangerous course that we will enter” and “I’m very much against it, many people in Germany are against it, but the political pressure will increase, it’s obvious.”

CONTINUES AT LINK
Bloomberg.com: Germany

Great when you begin a thread about the EU, but watch how few board members show an interest in anything outside of US.

Germany dragged its feet merely to show the rest of EU how important it is. In talks held late into the night on Monday, Jan. 12, the governing parties committed to a huge wave of spending likely to inject up to 50 billion euros ($66 billion) into Europe's biggest economy, party officials said.
Merkel initially resisted vast government spending as an antidote to recession, as advocated by the French and British governments, but a stream of bad economic data and the prospect of a general election this September changed the government's mind.

Of interest is that the global recession is a limiting factor on oil producers, as Iran needs about $60-$80/barrel oil to break even. Russian policy is dependent on high gas/oil, and this is also good for Germany.

If we are facing a depresion, it shuffles the deck.

 

[DanWyns]

protectionism and nationalism usually lead to wars
first trade wars, then the shooting kind

Germany had better tread carefully in these precarious times

 

[Neubarth]

protectionism and nationalism usually lead to wars
first trade wars, then the shooting kind

Germany had better tread carefully in these precarious times

It is tremendous privation that leads countries to seek aggressive leaders. Germany was ripe for Hitler when he arose on the scenes in the 1920's and 30's. Germany had beeen raped by England and France after the Germans signed an armistice (an agreement to stop fighting). From that day forward Germany was in a Depression with tremendous unemployment. (I know there was one brief period where they were starting to come out from the effects of their factories being gutted and resources being raided, but it was short lived.) When the rest of the world went into Depression, the Germans already knew what it was all about.

Now, Germany is trying to avoid going into another Depression. Their efforts are directed towards avoiding the mistakes of the past. (Those who do not learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them.)

Germany has the strength to stand up while the rest of the world collapses. Of course if that happens, it may be Poland and Russia that attacks Germany as opposed to the opposite happening in WWII.