Why do people blame bankers and not Euro politicians for Europe's economic mess?

[sasguru]

The EFSF offered bonds this morning; they were three times oversubscribed and the yield is 0.2%. Crisis.

Yes they had to sell 3 month bonds because the 10 year bonds they tried to sell in November got a less than enthusiastic response

[BrilloPad]

The EFSF offered bonds this morning; they were three times oversubscribed and the yield is 0.2%. Crisis.

Alot of institutions are axed buyers.

[doodab]

Nonsense. The facts are that those regimes did indeed send people to their deaths in "deaths in gulags, extermination camps or muddy empty rice fields" all in the name of building a better society.
The reality is that so far the system that has provided the most stability and prosperity to many is some form of capitalism.
It's not perfect because humans aren't perfect, but utopian schemes always seem to come unstuck when set againt the reality of the human animal.
Several millions of years hence we may evolve enough to try something better.

Industrialisation and the mechanisation of labour has provided stability and prosperity. It's easy to conflate that with the rise of capitalism, but it's a mistake to do so. Much of the infrastructure that underpins our prosperity was paid for by the state, not capitalist free enterprise, and this is true in most other countries.

To suggest that totalitarian regimes have a monopoly on organised genocide is disingenuous. The earliest concentration camps were set up by the Americans for the natives, they were later used by the British in the Boer war and in Australia, where we exterminated most of the Aboriginal population.

Dogmatic free market capitalism is no less idealistic and utopian than any other system, IMO.

[sasguru]

The point is that the currency market is largely unaffected.

This is because it is a lot bigger and it is much harder to manipulate it, so spekulants attack bonds sales of individual countries instead.

Now imagine Italy, Greece and others had their own currencies ... the attacks would still happen .

You, like so many economically illiterate people on here, seem to assume there's a cabal of bad guys sitting around deciding who to "attack next".
The reason Italy's bond rates are high is simply that investors think there's a risk they won't be paid back so dodgy countries have to pay more interest to attract buyers.

[Mich the Tester]

You, like so many economically illiterate people on here, seem to assume there's a cabal of bad guys sitting around deciding who to "attack next".
The reason Italy's bond rates are high is simply that investors think there's a risk they won't be paid back so dodgy countries have to pay more interest to attract buyers.

Why did that risk suddenly get much bigger this summer?

[sasguru]

Why did that risk suddenly get much bigger this summer?

Because the risk of Greece defaulting/leaving the Euro rose sharply and Italy having the 3rd largest debt in the world was the obvious next domino.
You still want to exonerate the PIIGS for running up insustainable debts, don't you?
Because it's easy to blame evil speculants.

[Mich the Tester]

Because the risk of Greece defaulting/leaving the Euro rose sharply and Italy having the 3rd largest debt in the world was the obvious next domino.
You still want to exonerate the PIIGS for running up insustainable debts, don't you?
Because it's easy to blame evil speculants.

I don't want to exonerate anybody at all, but I dispute this idea of 'dominoes'. Greece's debts were indeed ridiculous, and helped to some extent by the chappies at Goldman Sachs who constructed some wierd book cooking tricks to help them into the Euro.

Italy is a different matter; it's a pretty strong economy with a tulipe government. That second bit has changed now. I just don't follow this idea that all the 'PIIGS' are somehow connected by sticking their names into a rather insulting acronym or that they are 'dominoes'.

[sasguru]

I don't want to exonerate anybody at all, but I dispute this idea of 'dominoes'. Greece's debts were indeed ridiculous, and helped to some extent by the chappies at Goldman Sachs who constructed some wierd book cooking tricks to help them into the Euro.

Italy is a different matter; it's a pretty strong economy with a tulipe government. That second bit has changed now. I just don't follow this idea that all the 'PIIGS' are somehow connected by sticking their names into a rather insulting acronym or that they are 'dominoes'.

And I suppose Italy's debts are perfectly reasonable?
The fact is they haven't grown much at all in the last 10 years and so investors are justifiably worried about the state of their debt.

[Mich the Tester]

And I suppose Italy's debts are perfectly reasonable?

In comparison, yes. But not 'perfectly'. They were however serviceable and the Italian economy, while there are a lot of things wrong in Italy's politics, could actually get a big boost from some pretty minor measures.

[AtW]

You, like so many economically illiterate people on here, seem to assume there's a cabal of bad guys sitting around deciding who to "attack next".

Yes, that's how hedge funds run by a handful of people make money.

If Soros was put in jail back when he broke GBP then most of this tulip would not have happened.