Are Rome and Athens rearranging the deck chairs?
Changing the leadership in Europe is sort of like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, as we steam forward to meet that big financial iceberg.
Talk that Berlusconi is going to resign and that the present Greek Prime Minister Papandreou is going to resign when the new coalition government is formed, is all about delaying the inevitable.
No sooner had we thought the problem with Greece was over, (who are we kidding?) when Italy pops up on the radar screen.
Italy is a much bigger problem than Greece. The amount of money they owe is staggering and Italy will be impossible to bailout. As I said earlier, they can “rearrange the deck chairs”, but everyone owes too much money and we still appear to be heading for that big iceberg that is not going to melt anytime soon.
Even with new governments and new heads of governments in place, the problem remains. A gigantic amount of debt is still out there that has to be paid back, written off or disposed of.
I can’t imagine Greece suddenly having all of their citizenship agree to a very austere economy. No economy ever grew when it was contracting, it’s just not how economics work.
