In an interview with US television channel CBS yesterday, the chief of the International Monetary Fund, Christine Lagarde said that when you have a single currency and when you don΄t have a single or at least very closely coordinated fiscal policy then you run the risk of having part of the territory go into one direction and other part of the territory go into another direction. “And that΄s exactly what happened”, she stressed.
Lagarde also noted that the divide exists between Northern Europeans — the Germans, the Dutch and the Finns — who are industrious, prosperous and frugal, and the Southern Europeans — the Greeks, the Portuguese and the Italians — who are much more relaxed about work, money, and paying their taxes.
Lagarde said it didn΄t matter much until 2008, when the global financial crisis rolled in, separating the savers from the spenders.
According to the chief of the IMF “you know, it΄s like when the tide goes away, you see those that do not have their swimming costume on. And that was the case in Europe”.
The largest of the countries left totally naked was Greece. The nation of just 11 million people was a half a trillion dollars in debt and unable to pay its bills, leaving Europe with a Lehman Brothers-like dilemma: either bail the Greeks out or let them go broke, a risky proposition that could trigger another huge financial meltdown.
“There΄s still medicine to be taken. And that΄s what΄s happening in most of these Southern Eurozone states at the moment, plus Ireland”.
The situation in Greece is a close call, let΄s put it that wa, Lagarde said.
PS wondering why she didn’t mention the French and Luxembourgians? She was probably embarrassed to say, that they just love to kiss…
Lagarde – Juncker on francophone kisssssss
Was she using a middle finger pointing to herself?
LOL.
lol
Lagarde should take a look at the official OECD statistics on working hours…She would see that the countries she mentions work more hours than the supposedly “good pupils” of the north. The clichés are like unwanted weed, difficult to eliminate…
http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS
@Bob: middle finger sounds appropriate…
It is known that the IMF distorts the official data. IT still claims the minimum wage is higher than in Portugal while it’s on the same level since 1.March 2012
Please remember that what matters is the amount of work that gets done, not the number of hours spent at the office. Reminds of the saying “it’s not how many hours you put in, it’s what you put in the hours”.
🙂
If s/he wouldn’t be soo lazyyy.. (siga, siga!) and relaxed s/he would figure that the Basque must get to be the bosses of Europe because they were the first Europeans to steal fish in America, and that into Southern Europe also belongs the South of France (plus Corsica, its Mafia helped the banks the most since 2008) and she should divide Italy like Lega Nord.
Learn to speak straight, baby, and call the South Italians “terrone” or even better, because that fits even better into your from racism over-doped brains, give all the South Europeans that name! (“terrone” will be proud of it, esp the kids of Napoli that can’t go to school anymore because of your sweet cuts…)
If you would have led a normal life instead of your mutant life you would have been hitch-hiking through Italy in the Eighties and you would know that hitch-hikers hell Great-Bavaria ends at Rome and from Rome you can hitch-hike totally easy because there starts the south!
Welcome to Sicily where American Pizza, Messina Pilsener -that makes it with Pizza! – and Hamburgers come from, the octopus tells about earthquakes and you can sleep cosy and nice at the beach like in our beloved Greece!
http://scn.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tirruni
I could tell you why some really important Calabrese words are Greek but then you’ll send your secret police, hi, hi.
YAMAS
LOL. Maybe she and others should come and see how hard the Greeks really do work!!!! It’s not all sitting around in kafenions drinking coffee/beer/psiporou all day. They (those that have jobs) get up really early to go to work, so why are they not entitled to relax for an hour in the afternoon and have a coffee. They work a lot harder that a lot of politicians!