A Florida jury today returned a verdict of Not Proven in the Casey Anthony trial.
Well, not really, because for some reason the rest of the world has not yet adopted that useful Scottish verdict, AKA “we know you did it, but the prosecution didn’t prove its case”.
Yesterday, only two days after the final $17 billion of the first Greek bailout was approved for release, S&P announced that it would declare Greece in default if the French and German national banks carried through on their plan to roll over maturing Greek bonds by using the proceeds from those maturing bonds to purchase new 30-year Greek bonds. That deal was to be carefully structured, including tightly restricted trading of those bonds to prevent them from immediately losing all of their nominal value, which of course in a free market would occur immediately after they were issued.
The simple fact is that Greece is bankrupt. Everyone knows that, but the EU is striving mightily to conceal it because when the Greek domino topples the rest of the Euro economy quickly follows. French and particularly German taxpayers have had enough, watching their wealth being pillaged to subsidize Greece. Everyone knows that once Greece collapses it will soon be followed by Portugal, Ireland, Italy, and Spain, with Belgium and then France itself not far behind.
So the EU pretends desperately that none of this is happening. Hiding their heads in the sand is obviously not an effective solution. Unfortunately, there is no effective solution.
If Germany and the UK have any sense, they’ll withdraw from the EU and return to their national currencies.