rvr,
the imf chief dominique strauss-khan (dsk) is playing a double game.
at heart he is basically a french politician, edged out local french politics by the wily sarkozy. but dsk wants to become president of france, and whatever sarkozy says, dsk opposes him.
almost everywhere i read,it looks like the euro is doomed. i personally also do not like the euro, not that it matters much.
but what it has done, is to make (close to)third world countries like greece, portugal, spain, lithuania, cyprus, malta, slovakia, slovenia into thinking that they can be considered first world, by simply changing the currency.
it is like india overnight adopting the u.s. dollar, and claiming that we too are of the developed world. the wily merchants ofcourse, will immediately redenominate their wares, ie what was one ruppee will become one dollar and the ensuing disaster everyone will face.
in euro, german and french banks, gave money freely as these countries converted to euro, and with these money, these countries bought more and more of german goods, thus destroying what little they had of their own home industry. countries like greece, portugal or spain, where people from other rich countries went for vacation because it was cheap, overnight faced the high euro cost, and reduced going.
all this was thought through by german scholars & economists, prior to the creation of the euro, and prior to spreading it into the (almost)third world countries of europe.
the sooner the drachma, cruzeiro etc comes back into life, the sooner these countries will recover. ofcourse, the german and french banks will take a haircut. so let us see what happens.
or as you used to say rvr under a different circumstance, 'sit back in the sidelines and watch the fun'.
