# Nobody worried about Greece/Portugal/Spain and a Euro-zone meltdown? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 29, 2010, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701 "2010-04-29T01:55:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 1:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/61 "2010-05-07T13:46:08Z")
> [@Mighty\_Girl](#): > > And back to Greece: the regular Greek schmo had no idea what was going on. Their own government was telling them lies. How can you plan for a catastrophe that you have been reassured will not happen? These were not excesses if they (regular Kostases) thought they could afford it (Not that I don’t believe we all live in excess, because it is hard not to reach that conclusion when you look at how the majority of the world lives). Well, from what it sound like, everybody was dodging every cent of taxes they could while enjoying generous public benefits and retiring at 52 years of age. Surely anybody who thought about it could put two and two together? But I suppose that, much like the mortgage sector in the US (and there _I_ go now!), you had to figure that no, this can’t last but you kind of hand wave it away with “oh well, something will happen to make it all good in the end” and for good or ill by that time you’ll be cashed out / retired / whatever and can let someone else deal with it. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/62 "2010-05-07T17:36:57Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > That is indeed a very interesting graphic; thanks for that. Greece looks like a relatively small fish in that debt pond. I hadn’t realized Italy owed so much to France. > > **DickD** : I understand where the OTS went wrong, but [the FSA can’t regulate what it doesn’t regulate](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/aig-london-unit-not-regulated-by-fsa-1645223.html). That particular part of AIG snuck into the UK via [France](http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/business_money/should+france+have+saved+aig/3056572), which theoretically had responsibility for it. This incident does raise some of the major issues relating to regulation of multinationals falling under multiple jurisdictions and how to do so effectively (especially since one would have to include the US regulatory muddle). If you want to talk about a spattering of regulatory approaches, looking at international regulation is definitely the way to go. What I was originally saying was that thee British regulatory system isn’t any better than America’s is. We seem to be in agreement. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/63 "2010-05-07T17:39:00Z")
The ECB better get busy buying eurodebt or things are going to get tricky. I’m guessing the top politicians in France, Germany and other top eurozone nations are going to be shitting themselves this weekend. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 7, 2010, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/64 "2010-05-07T18:25:10Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > My comment looking in from the outside: it seems to me that when sophisticated men of the world get together at Brussels cocktail parties and chat about world events, and of course all of us here are reasonable fellows and these “problems” really boil down to something quite simple, really . . . they talk themselves into believing that the wider world really _is_ quite that simple, really. This is a problem with central planners everywhere. They work in broad strokes, and have no conception of the real complexity of the system they’re mucking about with. As a result, they soon become acquainted with the Law of Unintended Consequences. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2010, 12:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/65 "2010-05-09T00:01:03Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > What I was originally saying was that thee British regulatory system isn’t any better than America’s is. We seem to be in agreement. In the sense of “not in agreement at all”, yes. The OTS screwed up something within its jurisdiction. The FSA didn’t have jurisdiction at all in this case. Those are different issues. Might as well complain that the Federal Reserve isn’t dealing with the Greek banks effectively. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [May 9, 2010, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/66 "2010-05-09T21:12:22Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > In the sense of “not in agreement at all”, yes. The OTS screwed up something within its jurisdiction. The FSA didn’t have jurisdiction at all in this case. Those are different issues. Might as well complain that the Federal Reserve isn’t dealing with the Greek banks effectively. Any Greek banks operating in America will be regulated by the Fed and/or the SEC depending on what they’re doing. The Brits are entitled to regulate anybody operating in Britain but the OTS told then don’t worry, we’ve got this covered so they didn’t bother. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 9:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/67 "2010-05-10T09:39:36Z")
> [@Dick\_Dastardly](#): > > Any Greek banks operating in America will be regulated by the Fed and/or the SEC depending on what they’re doing. The Brits are entitled to regulate anybody operating in Britain but the OTS told then don’t worry, we’ve got this covered so they didn’t bother. Wrong. France was the lead regulator for that particular entity, which was “passported” into the UK. The FSA’s ability to regulate them was limited. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2010, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/68 "2010-05-10T15:03:21Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Wrong. France was the lead regulator for that particular entity, which was “passported” into the UK. The FSA’s ability to regulate them was limited. So they had some ability to regulate them? And if so they just let them get on with things, which is the point I was originally making. When AIG blew up all the regulators pointed fingers at each other and said they weren’t to blame, somebody else was. But British pols blamed the FSA to a large extent : On Friday, the Conservative Party Treasury spokesman Philip Hammond called for a public inquiry into the FSA’s oversight of AIG Financial Products in Mayfair. “We must not allow London to become a bolthole for companies looking for a place to conduct questionable activities,” he said. “This sounds like a monumental cock-up by the FSA,” said Lib Dem shadow chancellor Vince Cable. “It is deeply ironic,” he added, that Brown was in Brussels last week calling for tougher global financial regulation just as the scandal over the FSA’s role in one of the key regulatory failures at the root of the global panic emerged as an international issue. “We need an inquiry to establish what happened with the FSA’s regulation of AIG’s London operation,” Cable said. Since AIG’s collapse in September, insurance regulators in various jurisdictions have played pass the parcel, each regulator seeking to distance itself from the CDS firm’s London business, according to politicians in Washington, such as the US Congress’s Waxman, as well as here. The spectacle is reminiscent of the regulatory response to the collapse in the early 1990s of BCCI, a bank with operations in London, Luxembourg and the Middle East. BCCI regulators in its multiple jurisdictions, including London, dodged responsibility for not spotting BCCI’s $10bn fraud by blaming each other. On Friday, Adair Turner, the FSA’s chairman, declined to answer questions about AIG’s London operation. > **[Access Restricted](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/3225213/AIG-trail-leads-to-London-casino.html)** ---
**Author:** ![Marmite\_Lover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Marmite\_Lover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marmite_Lover)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/69 "2010-05-14T21:14:02Z")
Erdogan of Turkey is in Athens today. Be interesting to see how Washington and the Eurozone reacts to this. \*\*Talks on Friday covered the possibility of reducing strategic tensions and cutting defence spending. Greece, which is in economic turmoil and struggling to reduce its ballooning national debt, spends more on defence as a proportion of gross domestic product than any other EU country. “I honestly feel national shame each time I am forced to buy weapons we do not need,” said Greek Deputy Prime Minister Theodore Pangalos. “I know that on the other side of the border too the Turks are also buying weapons they do not need… due to an imaginary threat that arises from a political confrontation, which can be solved and must be solved.” \*\* > **[BBC News - Turkish leader Erdogan makes 'historic' Greek visit](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8682390.stm)** > > Turkey's prime minister makes his first visit to Greece in six years, seeking to boost trade ties. ---
**Author:** ![Candyman74](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ad7895/32.png) [@Candyman74](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Candyman74)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2010, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/70 "2010-05-14T21:19:21Z")
> [@Koxinga](#): > > the World Cup (whatever that is). That’ll just be the biggest event on the entire planet. You sound so quaint and provincial! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/71 "2010-05-15T10:49:37Z")
> [@Marmite\_Lover](#): > > Erdogan of Turkey is in Athens today. > Be interesting to see how Washington and the Eurozone reacts to this. Why? Brussels and the US have been trying to get the two to stop behaving like 12 year old children for decades. Rather more interesting, the Greeks publishing a list of tax dodgers. Greece names doctors accused of tax evasion By Kerin Hope in Athens Published: May 14 2010 22:28 | Last updated: May 14 2010 22:28 Greece’s finance ministry has raised the stakes in its crackdown on tax evasion by releasing the names of more than 60 doctors and dentists facing legal action for underreporting their incomes. Newspapers published details on Friday of tax filings by more than 60 “Kolonaki doctors” – named after the Athens neighbourhood where many practices are based. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/72 "2010-05-15T21:07:46Z")
> [@wmfellows](#): > > Why? Brussels and the US have been trying to get the two to stop behaving like 12 year old children for decades. Even more interesting, the El Pais report that Sarkozy actually threatened to leave the Euro… ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/73 "2010-05-15T21:24:32Z")
> [@wmfellows](#): > > Why? Brussels and the US have been trying to get the two to stop behaving like 12 year old children for decades. > > Rather more interesting, the Greeks publishing a list of tax dodgers. > Greece names doctors accused of tax evasion > > By Kerin Hope in Athens > > Published: May 14 2010 22:28 | Last updated: May 14 2010 22:28 > > Greece’s finance ministry has raised the stakes in its crackdown on tax evasion by releasing the names of more than 60 doctors and dentists facing legal action for underreporting their incomes. > > Newspapers published details on Friday of tax filings by more than 60 “Kolonaki doctors” – named after the Athens neighbourhood where many practices are based. This is disgusting. Greece knows who these people are, but has refused to prosecute them for years. Then the crunch comes and people start rioting, and they just… release their names to the public? Are they looking for scapegoats? Trying to deflect blame by throwing these people to the wolves? Don’t get me wrong - people should pay their taxes. But the government could have chosen to prosecute them at any time, and indeed could just haul them in now and force them to pay back taxes. Instead, they seem to be using them as ‘the enemy’. That’s typical class warfare crap you expect from places like Venezuela. It looks like [Spain is trying to get ahead of the curve](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/17/obamas-spanish-lesson/) and tackle their problems before being the next domino to fall: > [@](#): > > Mr. Zapatero is taking action to address the root cause of his nation’s fiscal dilemma: excess spending. For years, Spain had doled money out of the public purse with such abandon that its deficit reached 11.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2009. Mr. Zapatero will now impose a 5-percent across-the-board reduction in government salaries. Ministers will take a more substantial, but mostly symbolic, 15-percent cut. More importantly, the government will freeze pension benefits and eliminate a number of non-essential benefits. A total of 13,000 unnecessary government employees will be cut loose. > > Not surprisingly, Spain’s public-service unions care more about their personal pocketbooks than the economic survival of the country they purportedly serve and have announced a one-day strike to protest bureaucratic belt-tightening. Madrid’s stock market, on the other hand, rallied in approval. I think this may be a harbinger of things to come in several other countries in Europe. I don’t think this is exactly the death-knell of Euro-socialism, but it’s a pretty big wake-up call. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/74 "2010-05-15T21:28:47Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > This is disgusting. Greece knows who these people are, but has refused to prosecute them for years. Then the crunch comes and people start rioting, and they just… release their names to the public? Are they looking for scapegoats? Trying to deflect blame by throwing these people to the wolves? The Greek government has been disgusting for ages. On the other hand the flagrant fraud that Greek professional classes (including openly false declarations) hardly makes them very sympathetic figures. Of course part of this might be going “on the record” to prevent the usual habit of under-the-table payoffs to the local tax agent. > [@](#): > > Don’t get me wrong - people should pay their taxes. But the government could have chosen to prosecute them at any time, and indeed could just haul them in now and force them to pay back taxes. Instead, they seem to be using them as ‘the enemy’. That’s typical class warfare crap you expect from places like Venezuela. Mmmm. I wouldn’t go that far. > [@](#): > > It looks like [Spain is trying to get ahead of the curve](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/17/obamas-spanish-lesson/) and tackle their problems before being the next domino to fall: Spain is a far better governed country. The Greeks are complete fuck ups. > [@](#): > > I think this may be a harbinger of things to come in several other countries in Europe. Austerity? Well yeah mate. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2010, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/75 "2010-05-15T21:42:06Z")
Oh, they’re headed for austerity, all right. The question is whether it’s going to be a controlled austerity that slowly puts their fiscal houses back in order, or whether the political classes will continue fiddling until the system crashes down around them. The jury is still out on that, but the actions of the Spanish government are a hopeful sign. But they never should have let it get this far in the first place. It’s always much harder to cut entitlements than to avoid giving them out in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2010, 10:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/76 "2010-05-16T10:59:02Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Oh, they’re headed for austerity, all right. The question is whether it’s going to be a controlled austerity that slowly puts their fiscal houses back in order, or whether the political classes will continue fiddling until the system crashes down around them. Well for Greece that is an open question: [See this FT article](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c02cd5f0-5f7a-11df-a670-00144feab49a.html): > [@](#): > > The problem is that, unlike Ireland and Spain, which are picking through the ruins of credit and property bubbles, Greece’s was always a public spending bubble. It centred on a bloated state payroll, accounting for 1.1m out of 5m in the workforce, where emoluments are typically double those of the average in the private sector. > > “We are not so much victims of the IMF as victims of the myth of Zorba [the Greek]” says Taki Michas, a leading columnist, “who we all know taught the rest of the world how to live, without explaining where he got the money from to drink ouzo all day”. Yet the consequences are profound. > > “People are very angry and rightly so because they are going to pay not just for their own mistakes but those of the elites,” says Vasso Papandreou, a former socialist minister and European commissioner. … > > “Greek society likes violence as a spectator sport but only up to a point”, says Brady Kiesling, a former US diplomat who resigned over Iraq and has written a book about Greek terrorism. “The anarchists ruined everything for everybody by causing those three deaths”, he says, which the shrine of flowers and candles outside the firebombed bank attests to. > > The real question is whether the Papandreou government will lead. And whether New Democracy, the rightwing opposition that in government cooked the books and inflated the payroll, will offer support. “Politicians don’t lead here, they reinforce what they think people want in order to nurture their clientele,” says Stefanos Manos, a reforming finance minister in the early 1990s who would be boringly mainstream in the rest of Europe but in Greece is a maverick. “It shouldn’t be a difficult argument to make that you can’t go on having four times as many teachers as Finland in the state school system but doing such a bad job that parents have to pay for private tuition but I don’t see the government having the guts to go through with this”. This is not a genuinely Developed Europe political system. Greece is a 3rd World country that the EU let in from some misplaced classical nostalgia. Turkey is more Euopean in political culture than Greece nowadays. (well not really, actually they’re perhaps more or less the same, but the Greeks have less excuses) > [@](#): > > The jury is still out on that, but the actions of the Spanish government are a hopeful sign. But they never should have let it get this far in the first place. It’s always much harder to cut entitlements than to avoid giving them out in the first place. Both the Iberians have tried to get ahead of the curve, and the Spanish at least spent their money on real things with long term value - infrastructure, housing etc. that can rebound. The Greeks pissed it all away on inflated salaries and age 50 retirement. but you see people on this board claiming it was “The Banks” and “The IMF” that are at fault. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/77 "2010-05-17T12:56:13Z")
I think it was rather amusing that Obama allegedly called Zapatero to have him reign in the debt spending. Obama deficit: $1.5 trillion. Zap deficit: $150 billion. That’s like having Keith Richard tell you to go easy on the drugs after you took a vitamin pill. Still the advice was good. ---
**Author:** ![wmfellows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c2a13f/32.png) [@wmfellows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wmfellows)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2010, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/78 "2010-05-17T13:49:41Z")
> [@Rune](#): > > I think it was rather amusing that Obama allegedly called Zapatero to have him reign in the debt spending. Obama deficit: $1.5 trillion. Zap deficit: $150 billion. That’s like having Keith Richard tell you to go easy on the drugs after you took a vitamin pill. Still the advice was good. Mate, the figures that count are Per Capita Debt / GDP and Debt / GDP ratio. Just citing big numbers there isn’t meaningful. The US is not seeing the spreads on its debt that Spain is. Nothing amusing or ironic really. ---
**Author:** ![Rune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e68b1a/32.png) [@Rune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rune)\ **Post date:** [May 18, 2010, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/79 "2010-05-18T17:50:16Z")
> [@](#): > > The Bank of New York Mellon said its custodial data showed a “sharp acceleration” of net sales of debt from the two countries after the ECB began purchasing €16.5bn of bonds from southern Europe and Ireland in bid to halt market panic. “It rather suggests that investors leapt at the opportunity to clear their balance sheets of intolerable risk,” said Neil Mellor, the bank’s currency strategist. “This leaves the ECB itself in an unpleasant situation since it now faces a deterioration in its own balance sheet.” [Banks dump Greek debt on the ECB as eurozone flashes credit warnings](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/financialcrisis/7734280/Banks-dump-Greek-debt-on-the-ECB-as-eurozone-flashes-credit-warnings.html) - more of the same privatizing and socializing of the losses. Now the Euro taxpayers are stuck with their worthless junk bonds. ---
**Author:** ![Dick\_Dastardly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@Dick\_Dastardly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dick_Dastardly)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2010, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701/80 "2010-05-19T00:12:37Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > This is disgusting. Greece knows who these people are, but has refused to prosecute them for years. Then the crunch comes and people start rioting, and they just… release their names to the public? Are they looking for scapegoats? Trying to deflect blame by throwing these people to the wolves? > > Don’t get me wrong - people should pay their taxes. But the government could have chosen to prosecute them at any time, and indeed could just haul them in now and force them to pay back taxes. Instead, they seem to be using them as ‘the enemy’. That’s typical class warfare crap you expect from places like Venezuela. > > It looks like [Spain is trying to get ahead of the curve](http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/17/obamas-spanish-lesson/) and tackle their problems before being the next domino to fall: > > I think this may be a harbinger of things to come in several other countries in Europe. I don’t think this is exactly the death-knell of Euro-socialism, but it’s a pretty big wake-up call. Class warfare would be confiscating their properties, putting them on trial, taking their assets and putting them in prison. The kind of things that happen to tax dodgers in countries like America or Canada. These guys are being given a nudge to start paying taxes. All you have in Europe is a variety of countries that are in trouble for various reasons. Spain actually had a budget surplus before the meltdown but their property bubble/foreign capital inflows and the money needed to bail out their banks/revenue crash caused the budget deficit problem they’re facing today. Countries like Germany, with powerful unions and a cradle to grave welfare system aren’t going to change their system at all, it was working just fine before the meltdown. The Germans’ biggest problem is their totally unregulated banking system which has massive debts that they’re currently pretending don’t exist, so Germany really needs more regulation. Despite you wanting to see the end of euro-style social democracies what you’re going to see over the next couple of decades is countries like America become much more like European social democracies, not the other way round. Europe does have a massive problem to deal with with its effed-up single currency though. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/nobody-worried-about-greece-portugal-spain-and-a-euro-zone-meltdown/537701.md?page=5)