Britain rejects Eurozone bailout fund
Posted 4 hours 7 minutes ago
European Union finance ministers meeting to consider ways to prevent the Greek debt crisis from spreading across Europe have hit a roadblock, with Britain announcing they will refuse to underwrite a bailout fund worth some $60 billion.
EU leaders are worried that financial markets will continue to lack confidence in countries with high deficits.
Officials and diplomats in Brussels hope that a stabilisation mechanism will calm the international markets' fears about default in Europe.
But the loan guarantees are too much for the UK to swallow, and the UK Treasury will have nothing to do with them. Without the UK onboard the package looks pretty thin.
Political acceptance from European countries is critical, but British officials say that the stabilisation mechanism is something old, that is already been used to help Hungary, Latvia and Romania , and something new - a set of potentially huge loan guarantees.
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So, apart from this, Merkel is losing her election base as Germans are pissed she signed off on bailing out Greece. I didn't think she would be dumb enough to do that, but she was, and now she will suffer the consequences by potentially not being re-elected.
But what is more important is that most likely Germany will NOT bail out other PIIGS nations and will NOT provide more stability to the Euro.
Things may start to unravel pretty quickly in Europe, faster than what we have seen in Greece. I'd urge preparedness to folks in any nation over there who have massive debt to GDP ratios. Get yourself out of debt as quickly as possible, keep yourself liquid, and get your money out of the banks calmly because they will eventually have bank holidays, meaning you can't get your money out.
I love that terminology. "Holllllllliday!" :scarf: