The financial apocalpyse is upon us

This is the problem with the Eurozone. You can link all their currencies together, and make then financially dependent on each other, but these countries are all over the map in terms of politics (and corruption). More than a half of Greece's workforce is on the public dole and the government has been running huge deficits for years and lying about the extent of the debt. Because of the Euro, this is not just Greece's problem, though, it becomes Germany's problem and France's problem (the only economies worth a lick on their own in the Eurozone), because their currency is getting dragged down too as a result. What is amazing is that politically with its back against the wall, Greece still has its head in the sand. They are about to default on their debt. Luckily for them they have some angry bedmates who almost need tobail them out a bit and help them buy time (although Greece doesn't seem to recognize its good fortune). But the Greeks refuse to face reality and cut back on the spending because they have a population that the've made dependent and the people are ready to riot because of the sense of entitlement that has conditioned the society. Time to face reality, though, guys.

What's going on right now is that Germany -- who is largely going to have to pay for this mess -- is balking. The economic troubles may get much worse during the rest of this year, and I can foresee a possible scenario in which the Eurozone falls apart, because the stronger countries -- France and Germany, namely -- are going to want out rather than dragging down their own fortunes to support the rest of the continent, which has run itself into the ground through irresponsible spending. Germany and France have enough of their own problems, although in Merkel and Sarkozy they elected people who are about as fiscally conservative as you can find in Europe -- their socialized programs which were bankrupting the countries and causing big problems (particularly with unemployment in France) finally made people realize (or start to accept) you can't have things like government-mandated retirement ages with a nice pension at 60 because the debt they racked up has held their economy back. They are very strong economies compared to Greece, though, and when some of these countries start defaulting the only strong countries in the Eurozone are going to get hit in two ways: 1) Germany and France are the only countries with the credit to pay for significant bail outs, and they want no part of that, and 2) German and French banks have ridiculous exposure to the debt of these countries that are on the brink of default. We're on the brink of a crisis that is as significant as what the default of credit default swaps did two years ago. Whether things start falling like a house of cards remains to be seen, but the currency markets have been reacting to every little bit of nuanced news.