Should each state in the US have its own currency? Yes, less (fewer) currencies often are a good thing. A powerful shared currency provides all sorts of benefits versus a bunch of little weak currencies. But the devil is in the implementation details. 49 of 50 US states (Vermont is the exception) have laws banning the running of deficits, and states can't issue debt in the same manner as the federal government. This exposes state budgets to a lot more risk to flucuations in their economies, but this is partly compensated for by federal spending on services that states don't have to pay for. Europe did not set up anything like this, and it's paying the price for it.

Hopefully this will provide the impetus for the sort of fiscal integration system necessary to avoid these problems in the future. No, they're not going to agree to just pass off most national services to Brussels. But they could create an equivalent, such as an EU-wide "insurance system" to countries that provides temporary payouts to countries experiencing downturns, so that they don't have to suffer great pain during brief recessions due to an inability to run a short-term deficit. Longer term fundamental issues of changing economic strength would however have to be dealt with as the aid slowly tapers off.

(The EU could also really use an insurance system against the economic consequences of major trade decisions, such as embargos, so that countries like Russia can't play them against each other by retaliating hard against certain states more than others)

Greece can't pay back its loans and basically remain Greece. You never give an order which you know will not be followed. And you should know ahead of time whether your orders will or will not be followed.

Notably, austerity tends to shut down the economy, which will only lead to further financial insolvency.

Europe appears to be prepared to maintain the current minimal level of bank support going until the 20th (yep, these bank runs are happening even with the banks still receiving some support, just not as much as they were before). On the 20th Greece will miss a payment that will give then the grounds to withdraw the remainder of the support propping up the banks - any banks still around then will probably collapse immediately (assumedly being nationalized). If Greece doesn't resort to printing currency (whether they call it an "IOU" or not) before then, they will have to at that point.

Greece has a press in Athens to print 20 euro notes and has recently started talking about using it to make up their Euro shortfall. They're seriously playing with fire here, as that would be counterfeiting if they're not authorized to do so. There's talk about launching lawsuits to try to get the courts to grant them the right to print more euros. But how far they're willing to play that risky game if they don't get any sort of authorization... well, only time will tell. If Greece prints counterfeit euros, there's really no limit to how extreme this thing could escalate - Europe would be forced to wall off trade with Greece and even potentially travel restrictions to avoid them getting into circulation. The calm, measured response on Greece's part would just be to introduce a parallel drachma currency rather than printing euros, but Syriza isn't exactly famous for calm, measured responses. And nobody has a drachma press - it takes longer to set up a press for mass production of a new currency than one might think. Really, where this all could lead is hard to speculate....

Almost, if you just s/help/screw/

Ooh, fun thought: if you leave the EU then we won't have to listen any more to all of your "FYROM" whining whenever Macedonia wants to do anything with Europe. That'll be nice. :)

Finally you can stop robbing the eurozone with "loans" that you never planned to repay. (And let's stop this "The loans are impossible to repay" nonsense - Greece's loans are less than the total value of its state assets. Now obviously nobody in Greece wants to sell off their assets - just to pick one category, a military without any hardware isn't much of a military. But the concept that Greece can't pay back its loans is a lie.)

Now, Greece "can't" without selling off extensive assets that nobody would realistically expect them to ever consent to selling... but the only reason for that is because Greece's worker productivity is so terrible and tax collection so pathetically low. Mind you, it's not the fault of Greek workers that productivity levels are low - you work more hours per week than most of Europe (including Germany). But you make a lot less with those hours. You have a highly inefficient economy, and the extensive tax fraud just makes it worse - businesses have disincentive to grow (and thus gain better economies of scale) because it makes it harder to avoid paying taxes. And your military is a financial black hole. Even if everyone just wrote off 100% your debt tomorrow, if you kept trying to live like the rest of Europe (let alone better, like you try to do in a number of respects), you'd be back in the hole in short order.

Anyway, enjoy having your money (both in the banks, and your salaries) devalued to a small fraction of its former value while the cost of all of your imports shoots up, without a corresponding export boost because you hardly export anything compared to the size of your economy - also, a non-Eurozone economy in chaos isn't exactly a good recipe for a healthy European tourism sector, so don't expect the tourism boost from a devalued currency that you may be envisioning. Just don't think that people are sad to see you go - they're just mad for having dumped so much money into your economy when it was obvious that you planned to weasel your way out of ever paying it back.

(Note: the Troika isn't faultless either. In exchange for loans, rather than focusing on trying to improve the raw numbers with austerity, they should have been focused 100% on trying to force you to fix your structural problems so you can be competitive enough to stay in Europe. They tried to tackle the root problem in a totally counterproductive way and ended up earning a lot of hate for that.

Of course not, they're from Athens.

1) "Sun" isn't a classification, it's just a name.
2) If you meant "dwarf star", Jupiter isn't a star.
3) I assume you meant "binary star", not dwarf. Again, see #2.

That's what I was trying to find out, more than whether you had been in. You confirmed my suspicions in every way. Thanks, I guess. Sorry about your life.

You're doing great. Not Alex Jones great, but a little more time and disappointment may get you there.

sounds like that $22M is a total bullshit figure, unless those 20K workers were each costing ~$300K/year and working solid days without wasting any time on coffee breaks, web browsing, etc.

get another job and quit falling for bullshit.

What do you call it when something has a simple, obvious answer, and someone suggests instead a pointlessly complex and ridiculous alternative? Occam's Trash Can?

Just ask the Kardashians...

OK, but you'll have to give me directions to the Shire.