"Time Runs Short for Europe to Resolve Debt Crisis"

"The endgame for Europe is fast approaching.

...What’s left for Europe are two likely options:
either it splits apart or it binds closer together.

And each of these scenarios, from Greece exiting the euro zone to,
conversely, a deeper political union in which a federal Europe
takes control of national budgets,
brings with it serious political, legal and financial consequences.

...American financial institutions have $767 billion worth of exposure
...to private and public sector borrowers
in the euro zone’s weakest economies.

...it would cost Germany,
as the main surplus country in the euro area,
about seven percent of its gross domestic product per year
to transfer sufficient funds to bail out the deficit countries,
including France.

Government spending is the ultimate tax on the economy.

Milton Friedman

Economic Nobel Laureate

...any such move to a full-fledged transfer union
will be resisted by Germany.

...a view is now taking hold
that the ever-worsening crisis might lead to steps
giving [central] direct control over the budgets of countries
that continue to run excessive deficits..."

Landon

Nations are not ruined by one act of violence,

but quite often, gradually, and almost imperceptibly

by the depreciation of their currency through excessive quantity.

Nicolas Copernicus

Discovered Earth was not the center of the Universe,

meaning Uranus isn't either