The Economist on Germany, the Ireland bailout, the Euro and all that.

I don’t normally deal with economics on my blog, but I could not resist this . I should first say that my better half is German, so we have German TV in the house. I seen the news report live on ZDF (a German state channel) a few weeks ago when Angela Merkel suggest that bond-holders must suffer and pay. While my heart agreed, my head (and I’m no finance/economics expert) oh feck, that’s Ireland in the deep stuff. Two weeks later, a ‘German’ bailout.  And Merkel and her French counter-part still want some bond-holders to suffer. Fair enough, but as the piece in The Economist says domestic politics needs to be put to one side for the greater good of Europe as a whole – just because Merkel is under pressure at home does not mean the whole of Europe should suffer from the onslaught of the markets. One final point, back in the 1990’s when I was in college, the whole EMU thing was a big part if our economics course. Our lecturer at the time was suspicious of the whole thing. He thought economic and monetary union without political union would fail. I now hear lots in the media about the need for fiscal union. Have the chickens come home to roost!