On the brink of financial catastrophe

Just wanted to mention that some economists — Krugman, Eichengreen — think that Europe is only days away from a falling-to-pieces financial catastrophe. They also think the catastrophe is easily avoidable, but Krugman believes (or believed a couple of days ago) that the people in position to act lack the sense or, where they do have the sense, the collective cohesion to do so. I, who lack the expertise to have any kind of informed opinion on any of this, nonetheless think Krugman is/was being too pessimistic, that Europe will ease up rather than forcing Greece to the point where it has to default, that the European governments will back up their at-risk banks (France has pledged to do so), and that the European Central Bank won't let the interest on Spanish and Italian debt explode. I'm presuming the ECB has the ability to do this. As I said, I'm hardly someone who knows.



Reason for posting is that this story is not gaining traction as news in the U.S., nor does it seem to be affecting anyone on my flist or my RSS. So just wanted to yell, for your benefit, SKY MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT BE FALLING!

P.S. Haven't been posting much about economics over the last several years. Probably won't in the near future, either. The reason is triage. It can be fun to post ignorantly and exploringly about a subject and to then get in a discussion that might make me less ignorant. But other stuff needs to take priority. So I've been confining most of my ignorant posting to K-pop.