Turmoil in Europe: A Major Current Ongoing Crisis

There is a major ongoing event that I feel few people are aware of in the U.S. I feel now this event is important enough for me to write about it here.


Currently there is a major fiscal crisis going on in Southern Europe that is testing the long-term viability of the European Union (EU). The country most impacted at the moment is Greece, which has a massive fiscal deficit of between 13 and 16% of the size of its economy (the EU demands that a country’s fiscal deficit is no higher than 3% of its economy). Other European countries that are also in trouble like Greece are Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.


The situation is developing into a major crisis because the European Union is structured in a way that makes it practically impossible (legally-speaking) for other European countries engineer a bailout and extremely painful for countries to deal with their own problems. In addition, even if other European countries could bailout others, countries like Germany are very reluctant to bailout indebted European countries because they would essentially be asking their taxpayers to pay for the mistakes other countries made. As a result, indebted countries are left to deal with the crisis mostly on their own. The problem is that the Euro currency prevents indebted countries to devalue their currency (print money) to cover their deficit. Indebted countries also are finding it increasingly difficult to borrow money because investors want higher levels of compensation to compensate for the risk of debt default. Indebted European countries are left to make draconian cuts on government spending to reduce their deficit.


The draconian cuts on government spending are very severe in several indebted European countries. There is a lot more unionization in Europe than compared to America so there is very stiff resistance to the spending cuts.


For instance, there have been a lot of strikes in Greece in the past couple of weeks, and the Greek unions are planning to practically shutdown the country next week. In addition, Greek citizens are calling their political leaders traitors and are engaging in acts of civil disobedience to demonstrate their disgust with the current situation. Nevertheless, the European Union is giving Greece one month to implement more draconian spending cuts or Greece risks losing its economic sovereignty. The EU actually has the legal power to take away Greece’s ability to determine its own tax and spending policies. If this happens it would be like the United Nations taking away the U.S. government’s ability to collect tax revenue and to spend taxpayer dollars. I doubt the average Greek citizen would settle for the loss of their country's economic sovereignty without a fight.


The current situation has the ability to fracture the Eurozone. It is conceivable that countries could leave the European Union as individual European governments grow tired of being unable to print their own money and tired of having to cooperate with other European countries on some economic decisions. In the worst case scenario the entire Euro currency disintegrates as the wealthier European countries decide they want to determine their own economic fate again and not have to be dragged down by the poorer European countries… It is difficult to forecast exactly what is going to happen because there is so much uncertainty right now. I do not see the European Union as a superpower during the End Times like many Christians forecast so I would not rule out the disintegration of the Euro as a possibility.


On my website I have a section devoted to listing and analyzing news headlines that I believe are important to understanding what is going on today and/or what may happen in the future. Lately, I have been selecting a lot of headlines related to the ongoing crisis in Europe so if you want to stay up to date with what is going on you can continually checkout my headlines section, which can be found by clicking this link: www.prophecyproof.org/headlines


One of the links I posted in the headlines section is an interview of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. Ambrose is the best financial reporter covering the situation in Europe. The interview is only 27 minutes long so I highly recommend you listen to it. Here is a link to the interview:


Link


It is important to note that what is going on in Europe is just a preview of what is going to happen in the U.S. The U.S. is actually in worst fiscal shape than Europe is (the U.S. has a national debt larger than its actual economy and has an unfunded liability as high as over $100 trillion by some estimates). In addition, individual states like California and New York are in a similar situation as indebted European countries because they too are unable to print money. Unless a bailout comes, states will continue to be forced to make drastic cuts in spending to reduce their large deficits. This will lead to more job losses and growing civil unrest.


The Ascended Master that advises Benjamin Creme wrote several years ago that the U.S. would be overwhelmed by the weight of its debt, but it looks like the entire world is in this situation.