The Economist is supposed to get here on Fridays. Didn't get here until today, Tuesday. Cover story is about Greece. "Europe's Future is Greeces Hands". Real title" "We don't have a clue. They went to press before Sunday's Greek referendum but they reported some Friday poll results hinting that the Greeks might vote yes. Well, now it's Tuesday and we know the Greeks voted a big NO.
They go on to speculate that the big NO means Greece will leave/get kicked out of the Euro zone and this will bring the whole Euro zone down. They don't say how or why.
What might happen, is countries that need to do a little money printing to meet payroll, might bail out of the euro. Right now the Euro is a hard currency, they don't let countries print Euro's to cover budget deficits. The only thing a Euro zone government can do to cover budget deficits is to borrow on the Euro wide money market. But when a country does a Greece the market stops lending to them. Greece is demonstrating what happens when the lenders cut you off. The banks close, the store shelves go empty, merchants stop accepting credit cards, tourists stop coming, and the economy grinds to a halt throwing everybody out of work.
Some of the other soft countries may decide to ditch the Euro and run their own currencies.
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