E.U. economy about to fuck up

Council President Herman Van Rompuy told an audience in Berlin Tuesday night that it is
essential for every member state to fight against what he called "a new euro-skepticism"

Herman Van Rompuy

euro-skepticism

Ireland asks for €90bn EU bailout

British taxpayers face a multimillion pound bill to help bail out Ireland which last night asked for an international financial rescue package of as much as €90bn (£77.3bn), after seven days of denying it would need to succumb to the humiliation of a bailout for its crippled banking system.

The three-year loan will be handed over by the IMF and the EU, whose members last night agreed to support the climbdown by embattled Irish prime minister Brian Cowen.

Additional loans are also being considered by the UK and Sweden.

While the precise scale of the loan will be hammered out in the coming days, British taxpayers are likely to contribute in three separate ways – through the IMF; an existing EU mechanism; as well as a bilateral loan – all of which could amount to an estimated £7bn.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/21/ireland-asks-70bn-eu-bailout

Eating the Irish

Most people know Swift as the author of “Gulliver’s Travels.” But recent events have me thinking of his 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal,” in which he observed the dire poverty of the Irish, and offered a solution: sell the children as food. “I grant this food will be somewhat dear,” he admitted, but this would make it “very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.”

O.K., these days it’s not the landlords, it’s the bankers — and they’re just impoverishing the populace, not eating it. But only a satirist — and one with a very savage pen — could do justice to what’s happening to Ireland now.

The Irish story began with a genuine economic miracle. But eventually this gave way to a speculative frenzy driven by runaway banks and real estate developers, all in a cozy relationship with leading politicians. The frenzy was financed with huge borrowing on the part of Irish banks, largely from banks in other European nations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/26/opinion/26krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

S&P's David Beers warns enlarging the EU bailout fund (EFSF) could trigger ratings downgrades - for the fund itself, and even Germany and France. "There (are) no cheap, risk-free leveraging options for the EFSF any more," he says.