Bruce Church has left a new comment on your post "Bored Has a Message for the Krohn Family":
The European situation is worse than I thought. For example, one large French bank is worth only a tenth of what it was worth in 2007, the German populace is dead set against helping Greece anymore, and the German govt may fall if it does, and Greece is actually collecting real estate taxes through electrical bills, forcing people to pay quick or else have their power cut off. The electrical workers union is highly overpaid, and the most radical union, and thus hates helping the government in this way. It has already caused rolling blackouts to protest government actions back in June:
June blackouts:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=13882352
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/13/world/europe/13germany.html?pagewanted=2&ref=world
To observers outside Germany, the stern chancellor appears strong, but unwilling to act decisively. Inside Germany she sits atop a fractious and increasingly unreliable coalition of three parties — her Christian Democratic Union, the Christian Social Union of Bavaria and the pro-business Free Democrats.
France, as a presidential republic with a majority party in Parliament, has fewer domestic political problems than Germany, with its federal system and negotiated coalitions.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/12/us-eurozone-idUSTRE78B24R20110912
The storm on Monday forced SocGen, the hardest-hit French lender in recent weeks, to announce further drastic measures it denied only last week were under consideration, speeding up asset disposals and deepening cost cuts to free up 4 billion euros in fresh capital.
The bank's market value has shrunk from 110 billion euros in mid-2007 to just 12 billion on Monday. The bank's chief executive said there were no discussions regarding possible state intervention.
Seibert added that if Athens did not meet its fiscal commitments to the EU, ECB and IMF, that would automatically lead to nonpayment of the next tranche of aid.
Greece's deputy finance minister said the government had cash to operate until next month, highlighting the urgent need for the next emergency loan.
Greek power workers threatened to sabotage the new property tax announced by the government on Sunday as a last-ditch effort to please foreign creditors. Authorities plan to collect the tax through electricity bills to ensure swift payment.
The ECB disclosed that it bought another 14 billion euros in euro zone government bonds last week, the biggest amount in three weeks, under a controversial policy to hold down troubled peripheral countries' borrowing costs.
The central bank holds a total of 143 billion euros in Italian, Spanish, Greek, Portuguese and Irish bonds under its securities market program, which drove Stark -- a traditional German central banking hawk -- to resign.
