Re:When Irish Eyes Are Crying
by patrickk on Friday February 04, 2011 @02:35PM
(#2180795)
Yes, the EU has those advantages, but it's bloated, unwieldy, mainly tries to serve the interests of Germany (biggest economy) and is ill-structured to deal with the type of problems currently affiliating the 'peripherals' (or 'PIGS': Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain). The features of a common monetary policy are great when times are good, but allows the problems of one nation to spread like a virus when times are bad. So it's a double-edged sword.
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I find that statement a bit weird. Germany are on the hook for something like 120 billion in this bailout. That's €1500 for every man, woman and child in the country.
And that's after essentially funding the EU for the past 20 years. Though things have levelled a bit of late, they used to have net contributions about 3x higher than the next one (the UK).