Greece Defaults

[TimberWolf]

Time to buy beans?

[sasguru]

Would a second Greek bailout do the trick, ?

No. They need a constant infusion just to pay their debts and have no chance of generating any money themselves.
They have to go bust, or Germany has to agree to pay for them indefinitely - which is what a Eurobond is effectively.
Those are the only 2 choices.

[BlasterBates]

Euroland is in the news at the moment, but actually their debt is far smaller than the US. That is when the Eurobonds come, which they will, or something similar, the Eurozone will be stable. Its the US that will bring everything crashing down i.e. the Dollar experiment looks like it might fail. Even the pound experiment might unravel.

[Le Rosbif]

No. They need a constant infusion just to pay their debts and have no chance of generating any money themselves.
They have to go bust, or Germany has to agree to pay for them indefinitely - which is what a Eurobond is effectively.
Those are the only 2 choices.

Could the ECB not buy the debt back and apply a low or null rate?
Privatization of the national debts is what caused the mess in the first place (along with irresponsible government spendings)

[EternalOptimist]

Whatever happens, it is uncharted territory - which makes it all quite interesting seeing history being made.

Is it though?
I remember California being on the brink of bankruptcy a decade or so ago. So what happens in a federal system when one of the states goes belly up ?

[Le Rosbif]

Euroland is in the news at the moment, but actually their debt is far smaller than the US. That is when the Eurobonds come, which they will, or something similar, the Eurozone will be stable. Its the US that will bring everything crashing down i.e. the Dollar experiment looks like it might fail. Even the pound experiment might unravel.

US also has much more room to raise taxes than any european country. They have not completely dismantled and offshored their industry either (yet)

[sasguru]

Euroland is in the news at the moment, but actually their debt is far smaller than the US. That is when the Eurobonds come, which they will, or something similar, the Eurozone will be stable. Its the US that will bring everything crashing down i.e. the Dollar experiment looks like it might fail. Even the pound experiment might unravel.

Incorrect. The DEBT-GDP ratio is the relevant measure here and the US's is quite low:

List of sovereign states by public debt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[DimPrawn]

At least all this stops us worrying about the true end of the world....

Apocalypse Now: How Mankind is Sleepwalking to the End of the Earth

Apocalypse Now: How Mankind is Sleepwalking to the End of the Earth
Floods, storms and droughts. Melting Arctic ice, shrinking glaciers, oceans turning to acid. The world's top scientists warned last week that dangerous climate change is taking place today, not the day after tomorrow.


A few Euros, who cares! when the world is being attacked by Carbon!

[eek]

Is it though?
I remember California being on the brink of bankruptcy a decade or so ago. So what happens in a federal system when one of the states goes belly up ?

Well California cut spending and sacked workers. Greece isn't doing any of that even though it claims to be doing so, so its hardly a reasonable example.

[Normie]

Over a year out of date, but the following diagram is interesting:

Europe's Web of Debt - Graphic - NYTimes.com

Greece may be bad, but if Italy goes tits up it looks a whole lot worse. Will have to have a search to see if I can find a more up to date diagram.