Euro falls on rumours Greece is to quit the eurozone
 

The euro has fallen by more than 1% against the dollar, following a report that Greece had raised the possibility of leaving the single currency.

German magazine Der Spiegel said eurozone finance ministers were holding a crisis meeting in Luxembourg.

The report has been denied vigorously by eurozone countries, including Greece and Germany.

However, the BBC has learned that ministers from four eurozone countries are indeed meeting in Luxembourg.

The countries - France, Germany, Finland and Netherlands - are said to be discussing EU issues, including the financial situation of Portugal, Ireland and Greece.

"The report about Greece leaving the eurozone is untrue," the Greek deputy finance minister Filippos Sachinidis told Reuters.

"Such reports undermine Greece and the euro and serve market speculation games."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13317770

Note: 6 May 2011 Last updated at 18:45 GMT

I'm glad we have a strong SEK, to lean to, :yep:

hey vendor, so are you going to go to Denmark to spend your money?

Its what us Canadians often do, we go to the states to go shopping

Denmark is okay to pass and check or make a voyage to, now, it was a while ago I sailed to the country, but it has happened, but our friends in the British Isles they will soon be joined, :yep:

I'm glad for you too, but I'm also glad alcohol here isn't as expensive as in your country :03:

Right, that's a big difference between these products, :03:

Actually I heard a radio item a few weeks ago here about a ferry that goes from Sweden to Finland and is loaded with Swedish people that only take the trip to buy beer and alcohol in huge amounts (and I mean huge, like they take those trolly things with them used to load out the supply trucks at supermarkets). Especially on the way back that caused for some ... 'interesting' interviews :haha: I'd be doing exactly the same though :up:

True, in the past, not now, so where the BIG difference in price which is not today, but it is as you say there were large numbers who came in, and many had rubber legs as they walked or crawled off the ferry,:O: with the enlargement of the EU, so we prefer to travel to the Baltic states to fill up the repositories,instead, the Finnish ferry time is a bit strained now...:haha:

The Greeks are also at Luxenbourg and the lights are on trough the night at the Prime Ministers Office in Helsinki.:know:

This week has been the beginning of the end of the eurozone and maybe even EU.

Almost the entire region within the EU've derailed, so it's just a matter of time before the house of cards collapses, at least it feels like,:doh: and hope they have lights in a long time, things like this get to suck on them..

Well the EU hasn't derailed quite yet. Germany is economically on the way up again, and consequently so is Holland. The EU won't collapse, for the same reasons hardly any bank has collapsed since the crisis. Not even in America, where the free market is viewed as an even greater good than over here.
I'm not saying that's a good thing though, just an observation. If there's too much depending on an institution - be it a bank, or the monetary EU in this case - it will never collapse.
This is a time where we should rethink and redesign capitalism, but I see too little changes....
Anyway, I'm back to my movie :cool:

Greece wants to get new terms for its debt or 200bn more finance from EU, they are probably threatening to quit otherwise.

It is all the same as the end result is the same, Greece will default and restructure its debts.

The same goes for Ireland and Portugal.

After that Spain, Belgium, Italy and France..:woot:

The reason that Netherlands and Finland are also present is that they are part of the triple A credit rated countries.

Probably EU comission asking us to pump more loans on this bubble.:nope:

You're probably right, but don't you think the Finnish or Dutch would pour money into it without getting anything back?

I doubt both, but I would love to be proven wrong on both. Better an end with terror than this terror without end.

Maybe the transfer union will collapse indeed, but not in the forseeable future, political stupidity still is too determined to keep the illujsion alive, no matter the cost. Maybe after Germany has been successfully brought down by transfering billions and billions and billions while accumulating it's own debt burden and deficits. What many people overlook is that in Germany the decisive treshhold criterions for state debts beyond which most economists and historians agree a state can never recover but instead falls into an accellerating spiral - has already been exceeded longer time ago.

Germany has a debt burden of over 2 trillion now (http://www.staatsverschuldung.de/schuldenuhr.htm ) Roughly 30% of that was accumulated in the past 24 months. Early 2008, Germany was on the way towards an at least balanced budget, no new debts. Currently, the budget has a deficit of 3.8%, with a dramatic dependence of German economy on good exports and energy imports (at least the first being a showstopper in the long run).

Since social cuts are not popular with politicians and the left is in a up-pohase over here, I fear that the future will hold higher and higher taxes, and growing spendings alike, which more and more translates into exporioriation over here. Adding open taxes (Einkommenssteuer, sozialabgaben etc) and hidden consumer taxes (Mehrwertsteuer etc) taxes altogether, most of the ordinary middle class employees have to pay already two thirds of their income to the state, not just those roughly 48% that usually are quoted by excluding the hidden taxes.

Damn, I realise how many of those English economic vocabulary terms I am missing.

Some numbers on public and external debts and GDPs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...by_public_debt
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._external_debt

You won't be. Currency does not bow to the whims of politicians or nations. Money recognizes no master other than free trade. The EU is just one in a long line of failed experiments in messing about with free trade. The E.U. will fall, however noble its intention. Their attempts to socialize it and the obvious resultant failures have doomed them, and this is just the start.

Yes it does, maybe not to politician or nations directly, but certainly to banks and other financial institutions. If you believe currency to be a entity on it's own, that can't be influenced by anyone, you believe in a fairytale. Currency is an abstract thing. What it's worth is only the worth we give to it.

I don't think you have any idea what the EU actually is about. You can be pro EU or against it, but the fact is the EU was specifically designed to encourage free trade.
And that is what it does, whether one likes it or not

What we are getting is our economy ruined, debt to pass for three generations and an attempt to shove a federal state upon us without any democratic process.:yeah:

Finland and Netherlands would have done just as well outside EU and Euro.

Seems im not the only one calling it a Ponzi scheme.:up:

Europe is running a giant Ponzi scheme

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ee728cb6-7...#axzz1LdP1ujJY

Sounds good to me.

The Euro was pöolitically created. The dollar value gets inflenced by plltiicians - by printing tons and tons of it. If you ands James think currencies cannot politically ,manipulated or at last influenced, then youz are wrong. Another example how politicians impact on currencies, is wars. The more subtle manipulates of central banks also should not be forgotten.

James said it is only the market, I assume he meant "free market", whcih I claim does not exist anyway. Even a currency of a truly free market gets manipulated outside market mechanism by the eabove factors, or by speculations that hold no ground. It just has happened in Europe: the ECB refused to react to high prices for oil and precious metals, which were hyped in the past months by speculations becasue they hoped for high profits from overpricing when the ECB was expected to protect it. After the ECB denied that phrase that was expected, the porices went nose down and the dollar value went nose up, the Euro lost 2 cents within minutes after the prerss conference, and still is there. Which is better than the status before.

Speculation is the bone cancer of financial systems like ours.



I know what the EU was about. I myself have reminded of that often enough. Note, you think it still is like that, I however realise that after the fall of the wall the EU's ambitions have grown and become much more than just a union of cooperating economies. And that is where the trouble is, these new orientations of it. The fight between federalists who wanted a somewhat socialistically oriented "Federal States of Europe", and those who prefer the old defintion of deGaulle as a Europe of economically cooperating independent fatherlands that live peacefully together, started much earlier than just 1989, however.

The ideological basis and orientation of this Federal states project, as well as the obvious lack of citizen'S legitimation getting requested for it, is what defines the EU as an ursupator of powers and an ideological tyranny, and more and more often a tyranny by laws and rules that have nothing, really nothing to do with economics indeed. The EU naturally claims the right to dicatte the elected soveriegn parliaments of nations what they have to do and what not. More than 80% of the laws passed by the German parliament, are laws demanded by the EU, which just get waved through. The parliament villates the constitution of our country that rules that it shall do not right this: just waving things through, but to check and analyse them - and rejecting them wshen they are not for the good of Germany or are anti-constitutional. But it seems the EU is given immunity from this check.

The obvious big deficits in transparency, the lack of democratically given legitimation and the enormous private lobbyism interfering with and manipulating decision making in Brussel, has often been described and must not be explained once again, I think.

To hell with the EU. How precious it is you can see that indeed only its economic actions are being taken into account by others outside of it. But its ideological claims and ideas - the simple truth is all others are laughing about it, and nobody takes it serious, and some make best material profit by abusing it.

Let there be economic coordination and cooperation, that is the best factor to maxcimise the chances for peace and stability. Beyond that, one should kick the EU's butt and give it a bloody nose whenever it sticks its nose into things that must not be its interest at all and for which to do it has zero legitimation by the people of Europe.

But their are careers in the circus, and payments and psoitons to be defended, and earnings, and operetta titles and operetta glamour events - politicians will defend the EU with fangs and claws, because they are personally benefitting from it in so many ways, it gives them money and prestige and privileges.

That is not the EU I tolerate. Nor is that the EU that was wanted when it was founded.