Regarding Greece story, don't you think that if Greece gets debt reduction all other countries in trouble wants it as well?
Yup, and eventually they will get it, instead of crippling 'austerity' and asset stripping.
Greece has struck a huge blow against financial tyranny here, and the aftershocks will be felt for years, whatever the outcome.
Shame of it is that the cost primarily will be borne by ordinary taxpayers rather than the banks that originally made loans *knowing* they could never be paid back. They have already taken their profits, with the CB's holding the majority of this debt now, having taken it at face value from the banks as collateral for fresh loans, or bought it outright in the marketplace through 'QE'.
The whole thing is a sham, and hopefully in time the true extent of it will come to light and people will understand what has really been going on for the last 5 years - a shift of toxic debt from big banks to the general public, most of which will eventually have to be written off.
The mere fact that almost none of the "responsible" countries, who cry foul now, could be bothered with staying under the SGP budget deficit ceiling and the SGP debt level ceiling shows how unrealistic it was to expect voluntary compliance from countries who are infamously imaginative in their accounting.
Stupid greek 1990s and early 2000s politicians made a bet that they could outperform their loans in the long run. The German Frankish Dynamo made a bet that they could make a monetary union without a financial union. They both lost. So let's split the bill and work out how to fix the euro.
Yeh, and it starts with acknowledging that there is a bill to split (bipartisan responsibility) ... this process seems to be happening at the moment. Up until now the stance of creditors has been 'all the money and your prized assets' with a gun at your head - the model the IMF and World Bank has used for decades with remarkable success in Asia and South America. Nice to see it being defeated in Europe, and ironic that the IMF is now backing Greek debt relief.
In the long run I am not sure the Euro can be fixed. In think we end up with at least 2 currencies, one for the north (a stronger one, reflecting their competitive edge) and a naturally weaker one in the South, allowing them to compete, as a free floating currency would. All depends if you believe that a monetary union can be made to work in the absence of fiscal union, in diverse countries with strong nationalistic tendencies. Only time will tell, but so far it does not look good ...
And don't forget, it was the likes of Goldman Sachs who gladly helped those southern countries with their 'imaginative accounting' in order to get them into the Euro, and the ECB who turned a blind eye to it as they knew they had the most power and money to gain from more members.