Maggie's Farm

Yes, Reality Sucks. Fantasy can be much more fun. Portugal is a perfect case in point: Portuguese unions launch austerity strike.

Gee whiz, the banks won't lend them any more money to maintain a fake, debt-based life style. Why would they, if they know it cannot be repaid?

Some of these countries have been, in effect, ripping off gullible lenders just as much as people taking mortgages or student loans who know they can never really pay them unless they get very lucky. It's close to theft, or fraud, or something.

Related, and good from Anderson: The Eurozone Crisis Is Also a Governance Crisis — Isn’t It? A quote:

One is tempted to conclude, at this point, that the political theory of the EU today is being written by financiers and financial analysts in their credit reports. They are anxious, after all, only secondarily about markets. They are primarily anxious about governance and structures of governance — because the markets are trying to figure out whether the institutions of the EU and its members are serious about their legal and political commitments, and in what ways and to what