ABCDiamond

But what if we don't all want to ?

slapphead_otool

Philippe Moreau Defarge, a European affairs expert at the French Institute on International Relations: "Europe is being forced to recognize it isn't as rich or as well-organized as it thought, and faces several long, hard years of finding its way back to solid ground."


Bob Hancké, an expert on European political economics at the London School of Economics: "I think it's quite possible we could see the euro gone in several years — or at least reduced to a currency only used by France, Germany and a few small nations keeping it alive,"


http://www.time.com/time/business/ar...rss-topstories

iamthecreaturefromuranus

This seems to have become a thread advertising the American Automobile Association?

Centurion

I just noticed that too. I'll change it.

slapphead_otool

Triple A credit rated?

Centurion

If only credit ratings were so easy to change as thread titles

slapphead_otool

And hearts mended, reputations salvaged, and lives rescued from drink and debauchery.

paulry

Indeed. But where to begin?

slapphead_otool

Seems you might be right.

Heseltine: Tories cannot win outright : David Cameron will not win a general election outright and will struggle to form a government, according to Lord Heseltine.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/elec...-outright.html

slapphead_otool

On drink and debauchery?

my place, friday night, bring your own wine and women......



and no sneaking Kaporte in wearing that dress.

paulry

Haha!

It's a deal.

kporte

How many times, it's a KILT

slapphead_otool

An ex army blanket hand painted to look like a cross between a tea towel and something Marylyn Munroe would wear, does NOT constitute the national dress of those wonderful people north of the border.

JackTheLad

They might sell off their trillions of dollars of US Bonds that they've saved up.


Edit: What if they sold off their trillions of US bonds, so that they could improve their own populace financially and infrastructure and productivity?

The US would go bankrupt and revert back to the backwater it was, just growing corn.

China would explode selling tons of consumer products to chinese with labels on them saying 'Made in China'.

I for one welcome our new overlords. (simpsons joke)


JTL

slapphead_otool

Interesting – a few years ago the big worry was Japan owned everything. The book (and to some extent the movie) Rising Sun gave some bitter examples of how Japan was buying up the USA at bargain basement prices.

Now its the Chinese.

A few years ago I was at Army Staff college. During one lecture I intimated that the USA had won the Vietnam war. Everyone laughed, and the Directing Staff asked me how I worked that out. I pointed out that just as War is an extension of diplomacy by another means, so to is commerce an extension of war by another means too. The Americans lost the land battle but won the financial war. Vietnam held out its hand for US aid, and US investment in good old USD.

I also said that maybe modern warriors carried laptops and had MBAs.

We just spent 20 years giving MBAs to Chinese in our business schools. When I did mine over half the class came from mainland china. Now they are coming back…..